Córdoba

As I’ve said earlier, relations between Muslims and Christians in Spain have been like an unhappy marriage that went for about seven centuries. The most romantic, tourist friendly view of history tells us this time gave birth to the things that are quintessentially Spanish, and Catholics, Muslims, Jews and Gypsies managed to live in harmony. Currently it is widely understood that coexistence only happened for a brief period of time and never smooth.

Whoever was in power used their scholars to refute other religions and their soldiers to persecute their believers. Córdoba is a living example of this. We wandered around the laneways that like in so many other places in the South of Spain follow no logical planning, finding along the way little traces of buildings not wholly demolished from one era to another, recycled for the purposes of a new religion.

The mosque (or cathedral) of Cordoba is a stunning mish-mash of Islamic and Catholic symbols. Above arched doorways decorated with Arabic scriptures from the Koran are 17th century carvings of angels and saints. The private room where the Caliph would pray, all mosaics of the Koran were left untouched as the inside perimeter of the mosque became private chapels. The arches and pillars that support the flat, ornate ceiling of the mosque were also left untouched, bar the centre, where they became the support for a 17th century cathedral nave.

Why? When the Christians took over the city in the 1400s, they decided as was custom to demolish the mosque and build a cathedral on top of it, but the citizens of Córdoba threatened to riot if the plan went ahead and kill any builder who worked in it, so the new lords had to find a way to refurbish the place instead of destroying it. This is usually touted as example of how tolerant a society it was, but it doesn’t always add up. Every now and again, we were given grim reminders of what happened during the overlapping of religions and empires in Córdoba.

Walking down the street our hotel was at, we came across an abandoned building with an arched alleyway on the side, and on the front a plaque related Arab historian Ibn Hazn’s chronicle about how in that house one of the local defeated Christian lords was kept under arrest, while the severed heads of his seven sons were placed atop each arch as a warning to other Christians. The street we’re on is called Cabezas (Heads).

Amelia recommends Raymond Carr’s Spain: a History for some middle age mythbusting in Al-Andalus.