Encyclopedia of Islam

Cordoba

  

167  J

---

of its kind in any of the Muslim lands, and it 

was renowned for its great beauty. The mosque’s 

design recalled that of Umayyad mosques in Syria 

to the extent that even its prayer niche (

mihrab

) 

faced south rather than southwest, the actual 

direction of m

ecca

. When it was later captured by 

the Christians, they built a Gothic cathedral and 

several chapels within its walls, thus symbolizing 

the religious and political displacement of Islam 

by Christianity.

Cordoba’s first Muslim rulers built the Alcazar, 

the main government palace, next to the grand 

mosque, following the urban palace-mosque pat-

tern used in cities of the Islamicate Middle East. 

When Christian forces captured Cordoba in 1236, 

they occupied the Alcazar and later built a royal 

palace and church on its grounds. This was where 

Christopher Columbus came to get permission 

to sail to the Indies in 1492. Muslim rulers 

also erected luxurious palaces and palace cities 

on the city’s outskirts. The most legendary of 

these was Abd al-Rahman III’s Madinat al-Zahra, 

which boasted exquisite 

arabesqUe

 ornamentation 

and paradisiacal gardens. Unfortunately, it was 

destroyed by rebellious b

erber

 troops in 1013.

As a center of learning, Cordoba had dozens 

of Muslim and Christian schools. It also had as 

many as 70 libraries, including the famous Alca-

zar library of the caliphs, which housed 400,000 

books—substantially more than any other library 

in Europe in the 11th century. Among Cordoba’s 

great creative artists and thinkers were poets such 

as Ibn Abd Rabbihi (d. 940) and Ibn Zaydun (d. 

1071), jurist and religious scholar i

bn

  h

azm

 (d. 

1064), and i

bn

  r

Ushd

 (also known by his Latin 

name Averroës, d. 1198), the famed Muslim 

author of books on philosophy, 

theology

, law, 

and medicine. Cordoba was also the birthplace of 

Maimonides (also known as Moshe ben Maimun, 

d. 1204), who became the most important Jewish 

philosopher and religious scholar of the Middle 

Ages.

See also c

hristianity

 

and

 i

slam

; 

cities

; U

mayyad

c

aliphate

.