Why one city
The wider history of al-Andalus is told elsewhere on this site. This article looks at one city, Cordoba, which was the capital of the Umayyad rulers of Spain from the middle of the eighth century. It had been an important Roman town, and under Muslim rule it became the political center of the peninsula. In the tenth century, when the ruler took the title of caliph, it was one of the largest and best-known cities in western Europe and the Mediterranean world.
Population figures for medieval Cordoba are estimates built from later chronicles and from the extent of the city. They vary a great deal, so it is safer to say that it was very large for its region than to quote a number.
The Great Mosque
The Great Mosque, begun in the 780s under Abd al-Rahman I, is the most visible survivor of the period. It was enlarged several times by later rulers as the city grew. Its most distinctive feature is the interior forest of columns supporting double tiers of red and white striped arches. Many columns were reused from older Roman and Visigothic buildings, which explains their varied shapes.
The building served as a place of prayer, but a mosque in this period was also a social and educational space. Teachers sat with circles of students, often reading and explaining religious texts and law. Much instruction was informal and personal rather than organized into a college, and a student’s reputation depended on the scholars he had studied with. This is a different arrangement from the later university model described in the article on medieval universities.
After the conquest of Cordoba by Castile in 1236, the mosque was converted into a cathedral, leaving a striking example of Islamic influence inside a Christian church, and a Christian nave was built inside it in the sixteenth century.
Madinat al-Zahra
In the 930s Abd al-Rahman III, the first Umayyad caliph in Spain, began building a palace city a few miles from Cordoba, known as Madinat al-Zahra. It combined residences, offices, gardens, workshops and a mosque, set on terraces. Its purpose was partly practical, bringing government together in one place, and partly political, projecting the caliph’s prestige to visiting ambassadors from Christian kingdoms and from the Byzantine Empire.
The complex did not last. Civil war broke out in the early eleventh century and the site was looted and abandoned. Excavations since the early twentieth century have recovered much, and work is ongoing, so our understanding continues to develop.
Books and libraries
Cordoba’s reputation rests heavily on books. The caliph al-Hakam II, who ruled from 961 to 976, is described as a devoted collector who sent agents to buy or copy manuscripts across the Islamic world. Medieval writers report that his library held hundreds of thousands of volumes. Modern historians are skeptical of such numbers, which may reflect exaggeration or a different way of counting, and no catalog survives that lets us check them. It is safest to say that the caliph’s library was very large for its time and that Cordoba had an active book trade, including professional copyists. Paper, introduced into al-Andalus in the following centuries, made copying cheaper, although parchment remained in use.
Reports also describe private collections owned by scholars and wealthy families, and the idea of owning books was a mark of status. When the political order collapsed in the early eleventh century, many collections were reportedly sold or scattered. Details of exactly what was destroyed are uncertain.
Scholars and thinkers
Many of Cordoba’s best-known figures lived after the city’s political peak, but the intellectual environment continued. Some examples show the range.
- Ibn Hazm, born in Cordoba in the late tenth century, was a prolific writer on law, theology and love poetry, including a famous treatise on the subject of love.
- Ibn Rushd, known in Latin as Averroes, born in 1126, was a judge, physician and philosopher whose commentaries on Aristotle were later read by Latin scholars and influenced debates about faith and reason.
- Moses Maimonides, a Jewish scholar born in Cordoba in the 1130s, left the city as a child because of Almohad persecution and later became a major physician and philosopher in Egypt.
- Physicians and botanists worked at the court. Al-Zahrawi, who worked near Cordoba in the tenth century, is known for a large medical encyclopedia whose surgical section had an important afterlife in Latin Europe.
In addition to science and philosophy, grammar, poetry and religious law were prized. Court patronage mattered, as it did elsewhere in the medieval world, so a scholar’s career depended on the favor of rulers and their officials.
A city for the public
Learning was not the only reason for the city’s fame. Visitors and chroniclers praised its paved and lit streets, running water, public baths and markets, but descriptions come from admiring writers and may be exaggerated. The city had a diverse population of Muslims, Christians and Jews, and the surrounding countryside supplied it with food and materials. Its wealth came from agriculture, taxation and trade, which supported both private libraries and monumental buildings.
Decline and legacy
The Umayyad caliphate in Spain broke up during a civil war that began in the early eleventh century, and the caliphate was formally abolished in 1031. Cordoba stayed an important regional center, but it never regained the same political position. The Almohads and others ruled it for a time, and the city fell to Ferdinand III of Castile in 1236, during the Reconquista.
Its legacy lies partly in the buildings and partly in the idea of an urban center of books and teaching in medieval Europe. The scale of its libraries is best treated as legend mixed with reality, but its role in transmitting knowledge across religious boundaries is firmly documented.