Zoco Courtyard (Workshops in the Juderia)
Cordoba. What's in a name? Human settlement here seems to have always had a variation of this name.
The first recorded existence of a settlement here (though Neanderthal existence was confirmed in the area between 42,000-35,000 B.C. and preurban settlements dating from the 8th century B.C.)...was with the Carthaginians.
General Hamilcar Barca (Hannibal's dad) renamed it Kartuba (previously called Kart-Juba, which meant "City of Juba.").
The Romans, after winning the Punic Wars, took over Iberia (in 206 B.C.) and dramatically changed the name of this town to...Corduba. With the Romans, you can start to find plenty of things in town. The Roman Bridge still stands. The Roman city wall still stands (base is Roman and changes with subsequent civilizations as you go up...Moorish, Christian.) If you tour the Alcazar, you'll see a handful of nice Roman mosaics on display. Then there's the Roman temple and ruins there.
Well, those Romans didn't last forever. After about 5-6 centuries of glory, they faded into history books, being overtaken in bits and pieces by northern European groups. For Cordoba's purposes...the Visigoths. The Visigoths were Christians, not some backwoods group. They built a church (St. Vincent Church) on the site of what is now the Mezquita-Cathedral in the heart of Cordoba. The Visigoths, though, weren't as strong as the Romans and squabbled a bit. Civil wars made their presence here fairly short-lived (just over 100 years) until the next dominant folks came calling.
The Moors decided to pay the town a visit in 711. They liked it so much that they took it over by force and stayed...for about 500 years.
At first, it was a subordinate town to the Damascus Caliphate. And the Moors, too, changed the name of the city to something really different: Qurtuba.
Apparently tiring of reporting to Damascus, the locals decided they'd just run things themselves beginning in 766 A.D. by naming this the Umayyad Emirate (eventually Caliphate).
Things went well for the Moors in Spain (which is why they ran the Good Ship Iberia for 7 centuries or so.) While Christian Europe tends to call these the Dark Ages, they were anything but here in Iberia.
By global standards of those times, Cordoba was massive. Its population ~800 A.D. was about 200,000. That was 0.1% of the global population. (That would put it on par with a city of 7 million today, which is...Hong Kong or Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon. Basically...massive.) At the height of the Caliphate (~1,000 A.D.), the population had doubled to about 400,000.
And why did so many folks live in good ol' Cordoba? Well, during the 10th-11th centuries, Cordoba was one of the greatest cultural, political, financial, and economic centers of the world.
Christians and Jews coexisted fairly well with the Moors (well...it's all relative, I suppose). Take the Jewish quarter, for example.
The Jews all lived on three fairly small narrow streets near the Great Mosque (which was built on the ruins of St. Vincent Church during this time). They were allowed to go out and work in town by day, but they had a curfew and were all locked in the neighborhood by night. Not sure how I'd like that.
One of the most important Jewish scholars, Maimonides, was born here in Cordoba (in the 1130s; 1135, or 1138). This was the end of what folks would call the Golden Age of Judaism on the peninsula. (Bad things -- or worse things -- were in store for the Sefarad.)
Maimonides bolted at a fairly young age and spent the majority of his life in northern Africa (Morocco, Egypt.) He was a rabbinical scholar, astronomer, physician, and philosopher. He was basically a Renaissance Man...before the Renaissance.
Like the end of the Golden Age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula, the Moors reign was slowly being chipped away by Christian Spain. (Almost immediately upon taking over 90% of the Iberian Peninsula in 711, the Christians fought back, little by little, to reconquer their land.)
With the death of al-Mansur, after an expedition up north to La Rioja, in 1002, the caliphate slowly started to disintegrate. It had everything except a strong ruler. Even with that, it took the Christians quite some time to reconquer Cordoba.
King Fernando III of Spain took the city after a few months' siege in 1236. Cordoba lost its position as the most important city -- Sevilla was the new capital of Andalusia -- and Cordoba's position in the world faded during the Renaissance. (I guess you could say Cordoba had an anti-Renaissance?) The population dwindled to 20,000 in the 17th century.
What you have in town now are the remains of history, surrounded by generic modernity. (Directly across the way from the Door of Forgiveness to the Great Mosque? Burger King. How's that for progress?)
I'll write specific pieces on the Mezquita (which demands its own space) and also on the flowered patios for which modern Cordoba is famous in other posts.
Zoco Courtyard (Workshops in the Juderia)
Cordoba. What's in a name? Human settlement here seems to have always had a variation of this name.
The first recorded existence of a settlement here (though Neanderthal existence was confirmed in the area between 42,000-35,000 B.C. and preurban settlements dating from the 8th century B.C.)...was with the Carthaginians.
General Hamilcar Barca (Hannibal's dad) renamed it Kartuba (previously called Kart-Juba, which meant "City of Juba.").
The Romans, after winning the Punic Wars, took over Iberia (in 206 B.C.) and dramatically changed the name of this town to...Corduba. With the Romans, you can start to find plenty of things in town. The Roman Bridge still stands. The Roman city wall still stands (base is Roman and changes with subsequent civilizations as you go up...Moorish, Christian.) If you tour the Alcazar, you'll see a handful of nice Roman mosaics on display. Then there's the Roman temple and ruins there.
Well, those Romans didn't last forever. After about 5-6 centuries of glory, they faded into history books, being overtaken in bits and pieces by northern European groups. For Cordoba's purposes...the Visigoths. The Visigoths were Christians, not some backwoods group. They built a church (St. Vincent Church) on the site of what is now the Mezquita-Cathedral in the heart of Cordoba. The Visigoths, though, weren't as strong as the Romans and squabbled a bit. Civil wars made their presence here fairly short-lived (just over 100 years) until the next dominant folks came calling.
The Moors decided to pay the town a visit in 711. They liked it so much that they took it over by force and stayed...for about 500 years.
At first, it was a subordinate town to the Damascus Caliphate. And the Moors, too, changed the name of the city to something really different: Qurtuba.
Apparently tiring of reporting to Damascus, the locals decided they'd just run things themselves beginning in 766 A.D. by naming this the Umayyad Emirate (eventually Caliphate).
Things went well for the Moors in Spain (which is why they ran the Good Ship Iberia for 7 centuries or so.) While Christian Europe tends to call these the Dark Ages, they were anything but here in Iberia.
By global standards of those times, Cordoba was massive. Its population ~800 A.D. was about 200,000. That was 0.1% of the global population. (That would put it on par with a city of 7 million today, which is...Hong Kong or Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon. Basically...massive.) At the height of the Caliphate (~1,000 A.D.), the population had doubled to about 400,000.
And why did so many folks live in good ol' Cordoba? Well, during the 10th-11th centuries, Cordoba was one of the greatest cultural, political, financial, and economic centers of the world.
Christians and Jews coexisted fairly well with the Moors (well...it's all relative, I suppose). Take the Jewish quarter, for example.
The Jews all lived on three fairly small narrow streets near the Great Mosque (which was built on the ruins of St. Vincent Church during this time). They were allowed to go out and work in town by day, but they had a curfew and were all locked in the neighborhood by night. Not sure how I'd like that.
One of the most important Jewish scholars, Maimonides, was born here in Cordoba (in the 1130s; 1135, or 1138). This was the end of what folks would call the Golden Age of Judaism on the peninsula. (Bad things -- or worse things -- were in store for the Sefarad.)
Maimonides bolted at a fairly young age and spent the majority of his life in northern Africa (Morocco, Egypt.) He was a rabbinical scholar, astronomer, physician, and philosopher. He was basically a Renaissance Man...before the Renaissance.
Like the end of the Golden Age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula, the Moors reign was slowly being chipped away by Christian Spain. (Almost immediately upon taking over 90% of the Iberian Peninsula in 711, the Christians fought back, little by little, to reconquer their land.)
With the death of al-Mansur, after an expedition up north to La Rioja, in 1002, the caliphate slowly started to disintegrate. It had everything except a strong ruler. Even with that, it took the Christians quite some time to reconquer Cordoba.
King Fernando III of Spain took the city after a few months' siege in 1236. Cordoba lost its position as the most important city -- Sevilla was the new capital of Andalusia -- and Cordoba's position in the world faded during the Renaissance. (I guess you could say Cordoba had an anti-Renaissance?) The population dwindled to 20,000 in the 17th century.
What you have in town now are the remains of history, surrounded by generic modernity. (Directly across the way from the Door of Forgiveness to the Great Mosque? Burger King. How's that for progress?)
I'll write specific pieces on the Mezquita (which demands its own space) and also on the flowered patios for which modern Cordoba is famous in other posts.