all over the continent. While the rest of Europe plodded through the centuries, this city was famous for its immense library of 400,000 books, for lighted streets and houses with hot and cold water, for weavers and ivory carvers, for three hundred baths, fifty hospitals, and seventeen colleges. Mathematicians, philosophers, musicians, and poets were exalted. Even women were writers and musicians. A spirit of tolerance prevailed among the Jews, Muslims, and Christians, creating a munificent climate for the expansion of culture. This
convivencia
(peaceful coexistence) came to a crashing halt in the twelfth century with the rise of the bigoted Almohad rulers, who supplanted the more flexible and intellectual Umayyads. Then in 1236 Fernando III subdued the city and caused the non-Christians to flee.
The Umayyads are the heroes of Córdoba. Their dynasty in Spain began with a fabulous character, Abd ar-Rahman. In 750 he was in his teens when his entire family, the rulers of Syria, was deposed and murdered. Like other pioneers since, he set out for the west, making his way to what he’d heard of as al-Andalus, where he quickly built a loyal following. María Rosa Menocal’s
The Ornament of the World
tells how Abd ar-Rahman changed the course of history. She’s right. The more I’ve read about Andalucía, the more I realize that the history I studied in college was a stripped-down version, emphasizing at every turn the joyful triumph of Christianity. Courses often take a path that illustrates certain biases because it’s much more vexing to teach contradictions or coexisting truths.
Living in Italy, I began to see more clearly how the Western world was fitted intricately together from all the cultures around
mare nostrum
, our sea, as the Romans intimately called it. Even in Tuscany I began to be aware of the farther influence, the almost-ignored Arab influence.
Saracinesca
, a word we use frequently, reveals the Saracen way with water. They brought west with them elaborate irrigation methods, waterwheels, and evidently a kind of perpendicular faucet that cuts off the flow of water, which is how we use
saracinesca
. On our first trip to Sicily, we had a full exposure to the intermingling of that island’s history with the Moors. Now in Andalucía, the depth of the Arab contribution to the Mediterranean cultures almost overwhelms us. There is much to rethink.
The mosque. We’ve skirted it, looking at the portals that relieve the plain sandstone exterior. Each horseshoe-arch opening, with the door below, reminds me of a schematic human figure, with the radiating design around the arch like a nimbus. Since realistic images were forbidden, I wonder if this design had the hidden purpose of placing the idea of the body within the design. The portal openings are backed by geometric designs of great variety and complexity.
Our big cowboy who took over the town, Abd ar-Rahman, bought a Christian church, which had been built over a Roman temple, and began to enlarge it for a mosque. His heirs continued the work. This is the largest mosque in the world, where you can
feel
how the architecture guides you toward a philosophy of prayer. The immense, spreading horizontal space keeps you close to the ground, with no sense of hierarchy, no sense of uplifting the spirit toward heaven. It is profoundly unlike the experience of the Gothic but does not feel totally foreign to the experience of the Romanesque. In a mosque, calligraphic inscriptions from the Koran replace the holy images in Christian churches. Wherever you prostrate yourself is holy, as long as you face Mecca; the mosque has no focal-point high altar. Any inspired supplicant can become a prayer leader in his part of the mosque. In the Córdoba mosque, the multiplied columns make it clear to the worshiper that all the space therein is equal space before Allah.
The most often-used word to describe the mosque is
forest
. One writer compared the endless columns topped by arches
convivencia
(peaceful coexistence) came to a crashing halt in the twelfth century with the rise of the bigoted Almohad rulers, who supplanted the more flexible and intellectual Umayyads. Then in 1236 Fernando III subdued the city and caused the non-Christians to flee.
The Umayyads are the heroes of Córdoba. Their dynasty in Spain began with a fabulous character, Abd ar-Rahman. In 750 he was in his teens when his entire family, the rulers of Syria, was deposed and murdered. Like other pioneers since, he set out for the west, making his way to what he’d heard of as al-Andalus, where he quickly built a loyal following. María Rosa Menocal’s
The Ornament of the World
tells how Abd ar-Rahman changed the course of history. She’s right. The more I’ve read about Andalucía, the more I realize that the history I studied in college was a stripped-down version, emphasizing at every turn the joyful triumph of Christianity. Courses often take a path that illustrates certain biases because it’s much more vexing to teach contradictions or coexisting truths.
Living in Italy, I began to see more clearly how the Western world was fitted intricately together from all the cultures around
mare nostrum
, our sea, as the Romans intimately called it. Even in Tuscany I began to be aware of the farther influence, the almost-ignored Arab influence.
Saracinesca
, a word we use frequently, reveals the Saracen way with water. They brought west with them elaborate irrigation methods, waterwheels, and evidently a kind of perpendicular faucet that cuts off the flow of water, which is how we use
saracinesca
. On our first trip to Sicily, we had a full exposure to the intermingling of that island’s history with the Moors. Now in Andalucía, the depth of the Arab contribution to the Mediterranean cultures almost overwhelms us. There is much to rethink.
The mosque. We’ve skirted it, looking at the portals that relieve the plain sandstone exterior. Each horseshoe-arch opening, with the door below, reminds me of a schematic human figure, with the radiating design around the arch like a nimbus. Since realistic images were forbidden, I wonder if this design had the hidden purpose of placing the idea of the body within the design. The portal openings are backed by geometric designs of great variety and complexity.
Our big cowboy who took over the town, Abd ar-Rahman, bought a Christian church, which had been built over a Roman temple, and began to enlarge it for a mosque. His heirs continued the work. This is the largest mosque in the world, where you can
feel
how the architecture guides you toward a philosophy of prayer. The immense, spreading horizontal space keeps you close to the ground, with no sense of hierarchy, no sense of uplifting the spirit toward heaven. It is profoundly unlike the experience of the Gothic but does not feel totally foreign to the experience of the Romanesque. In a mosque, calligraphic inscriptions from the Koran replace the holy images in Christian churches. Wherever you prostrate yourself is holy, as long as you face Mecca; the mosque has no focal-point high altar. Any inspired supplicant can become a prayer leader in his part of the mosque. In the Córdoba mosque, the multiplied columns make it clear to the worshiper that all the space therein is equal space before Allah.
The most often-used word to describe the mosque is
forest
. One writer compared the endless columns topped by arches
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