The Glory of Cordoba

Cordoba! Where do I start. I drove to Seville from Granada, spent the night there and in the morning I drove to Cordoba which was about 1.5 hour away from Seville. What a glorious city. It used to be the most populous city in the world at its glory (over a million people) but now only 330,000 people live there. The first picture to the right is outside the mosque of Cordoba, which is a cathedral now. They call it Mezquita/Catedral de Cordoba. The original mehrab area was left intact as shown in the second picture to the right, whereas everywhere else in the mosque pictures and statues crowd the walls and ceilings. Also there was a grand organ playing music. The Muslims in Cordoba have been trying to get permission to pray in the Mehrab area of the mosque but their pleas were rejected many times by the government and by the Vatican. It took two hundred years to finish building this mosque, as generations kept improving on it and adding details that made it in this beautiful final form. It was the Caliph Al Hakam who ruled Cordoba in its golden age and he built many universities and hospitals and made Cordoba the shining lighthouse of Europe.

The picture to the left shows the Cordoba mosque from inside with its famous double arches with white and red stones. No paint so the colors can last for eternity without the need of any maintenance. Brilliant architecture and beautiful simplicity. The Mehrab area is left alone and is in its original condition as shown below.

Some of the famous characters of Cordoba at the time were Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Ibn Sina (Avecina) and Mohammad Al Ghafiqi, and Al Idrissi, and Ibn Maimoun (Maimonides) and Ibn Al Arabi. and many others. You could see their statues all over the city and many streets are named after them. One of the best attractions I saw there was a museum across the bridge from Cordoba mosque. In that museum they showed us how the Islamic civilization shone is Spain. They talked about Averroes, Ibn Al Arabi, Maimonides, and Alfonso the tenth, and gave glimpses of their teachings, and how Cordoba was living in peace with Muslims, Christians and Jews all living side by side learning together and prospering together. The museum also showed how the inhabitants of Cordoba took care of the ecology of their land as instructed by the Quran. They showed the map that Idrissi made at that time and how accurate it was similar to today's maps. Amazing. I was really touched by that museum and considered it the highlight of my visit to Cordoba.

The river of Cordoba is called Guadalqivir, literally means the big river in Arabic, and is pronounced exactly like in Arabic وادي الكبير. The same river extends also to Seville, which I will talk about in my next blog. The streets in Cordoba are narrow and ancient. They are clean and well maintained. They make you fall in love with the historic city easily. I walked along those streets and saw an old synagogue with the statue of Maimonides in front of it. Just like the Muslims were denied worship in the Mezquita, the Jews are denied worship in the synagogue also.

The temperature was brutally hot at this time of the year, so if you want to visit southern Spain don't go there in August but in April or some other time. After 2 pm you can hardly see any people walking in the streets anymore as they take their siesta of the afternoon and then don't appear again until it is dark when they stay up all night after that. I stayed in Cordoba until about 3 pm and the heat was so brutal that I preferred to go back to the car where at least I had air conditioning there, and I drove to the original city that was first built in Spain called Madinat Al Zahra. This city was built by Abdel Rahman III but all what is left of it now are ruins. I saw the entrance to the city but unfortunately it was closed after 2:30 pm and I missed seeing it.

To the left you see a picture of the wall of Cordoba city. I had to say goodbye and return back to Seville as the heat was becoming unbearable, especially after my frustration of not being able to see Madinat Al Zahra which literally means the shining city. The trip back to Seville took about 1.5 hours, and in my next blog I will talk about what I saw in Seville, which is another glorious city from historic Moorish Spain. If you want to see Andalusia then visiting Cordoba is a must, even before Granada. Next to them I would say Seville and Toledo.