ALAndalus THE ART OF ISLAMIC SPAIN EDITED BY JERRILYNN D. Dopps THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK DistriputeD BY Harry N. Asrams, INc., New YorkThis publication is issued in conjunction withthe exhibition Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain, held atthe Alhambra, Granada (March 18~June 7, 992), and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, [New York (July “September 27, 1992) ‘The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife, under the joint patronage of the Junta de Andalucia, the Ministerio de Cultura, and the Ayuntamiento de Granada; it was sponsored by Banco Bilbao Vizcaya ‘Transportation assistance has been provided by Iberia Airlines of Spain, ‘Additional support for the exhibition in New York has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency, and by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Copyright ©1992 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York All rights reserved John P. O'Neill, Editor in Chief Carol Fuerstein, Editor, assisted by Rachel Moskowitz Ruben, Joanne Greenspun, Barbara Cavaliere, Tayeb El-Hibri, Cynthia Clark, Ann M. Lucke, Kathleen Howard, Joan Hol, and Emily Walter Bruce Campbell, Designer ‘Gwen Roginsky, Production Manager, assisted by Susan Chun Many photographs taken in Spain and Morocco for this volume were commissioned by ‘The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Site photography by Raghubir Singh, London, and Archivo Fotogrifco Oronoz, Madrid; object photography by Bruce White, The Photograph Studio, ‘The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Sheldan Collins, New York: and Archivo Fotogrifico Oronoz, Madrid. Fora complete listing of photograph credits, seep. 432 Set in Aldus and Medici Script by U.S. Lithograph, typographers, New York Separations by Professional Graphics, Rockford, Ilinois Printed by Julio Soto Impresor, §.A., Madrid Bound by Encuadernacién Ramos, S.A., Madrid ‘Translations from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden except Juan Zozaya essay and entries 17-19, 50, 54,53, 70-73 by Edith Grossman; Guillermo Rossell6 Bordoy essay and entries by John Upton; Chistian Ewert essay from the German by K. Watson, London; entries by AbdellatifEl-Hajjami and Lhaj Moussa Aouni from the French by Ernst van Haagen Maps by Wilhelmina Reyinga-Amrhein, plans by Irmgard Lochner except those on pp. 86,88, 90-92, 94 by Christian Ewert and p. 171 by Francisco Prieto-Moreno Jacket Cover Illustrations Front: Patio de los Leones, the Alhambra Back: No. 3, Pyxis of al-Mughtra Frontispiece Detail, No. 119, Panel from the Mexuar, the Alhambra LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA ‘Al Andalus: the art of llamic Spain / edited by Jerilynn D. Dodds p.cm. Exhibition catalog. Includes bibliographical references and index. 15BN 0-87099-636-3. —168N 0-87099-637-1 (pbk) Dut, M-5599-1992 1. An, Islamic—Spain—Exhibitions. 2. Art, Medieval— Spain—Exhibitions 3. Art—Spain—Eshibitions. I. Dodds, Jerritynn Denise. 7103.44 1992 709'.46'80747471—de20 948335 W 0-B109-6413-9 (Abrams)The Great Mosque of Cordoba JeERRILYNN D. Dopps hhe Great Mosque of Cérdoba, like a massive anchor, draws the city to the banks of the Guadalquivir River. Except for its minaret, the mosque cannot be seen over the lowest and most ancient rooftops, and yet its presence is felt everywhere in the old city austere walls that hug the ground and yet also seem to give form to the urban fabric. Cérdoba’s main congregational mosque was one of the first monumental expressions of Muslim rule in Spain. It was not only a powerful presence in Cérdoba but also arguably the building that most fully embod- ied an image of the Muslim hegemony in al-Andalus during the caliphal period. What is extraordinary is that the mosque became such an image for both the Christians and the Muslims of western Europe—as if its singular forms could be understood as the natural outgrowth of the Islamic culture of al-Andalus and also as abstract symbols of the Muslim presence on the Iberian Peninsula. So the history of the mosque simultaneously chronicles the development of a Muslim Tanguage of forms on the western frontier of Islam and the creation of a series of potent visual symbols of what that Muslim culture meant to those within and without it. The Early Mosque and the Emirate ‘The earliest accounts of the Great Mosque of Cérdoba are shrouded in myth, which suggests that this partic- ular monument began very early to embody im- portant meanings in the Islamic world. A tradition transmitted by al-Razi tells us that at the time of the conquest of Cordoba, the Muslims “agreed with the barbarians of Cérdoba to take half of their largest church which was situated within the city; in this half Great Mosque of Cérdoba with Catedral de Santa Maria, aerial view they constructed the mosque, while leaving the other half to the Christians, but destroying the other churches.” While this account is probably apocry- phal and is bound up with preoccupations of later times to which I shall return, it recalls for us later Islamic historians’ fascination with the necessary intimacy between an indigenous Christian population and the Muslim rulers. There were other newly con- quered cities in the early Islamic world—Damascus and Jerusalem in particular —where unconverted Chris- tians were a force to be reckoned with; yet Cérdoba came over time to represent in the minds of Muslim historians the locus of encounter with the other, the idea that Spain was the edge of the Muslim world, Islam’s frontier with a remote Christian north. These were, however, not the primary concerns of the man who built the earliest parts of the monu- ment that stands today, for the young emir ‘Abd al-Rahman I brought a different drama with him on his historic journey to al-Andalus. In an act that would shape the character of Islamic rule in Spain for centuries, this grandson of the Umayyad caliph Hisham escaped the ‘Abbasid forces that sought his life, along with the destruction of the entire Umayyad royal family. He was forced to leave his home in Syria, the site of the caliphate, which had for close toa century been governed by his line, and to flee across the face of North Africa with ‘Abbasid troops hard on his heels. He found allies with his mother’s people in Morocco and, by the age of twenty-six, unified al-Andalus under his own rule. Tradition has it that ‘Abd al-Rahman I began considering the construction of the mosque nearly thirty years after establishing himself in Cérdoba.* The same historians who suggest that the Christian nu12 and Muslim populations of Cérdoba had been sharing the church of San Vicente on the site of the present mosque contend that he purchased from the Chris- tians the half of the church they still shared with the Muslims, giving them permission to build additional churches outside the city walls. Ibn Idhari tells us that “Abd al-Rahman began the demolition of the church in 16911 (785/6), and finished the new mosque in 170H (786/7)."”> ‘Abd al-Rahman I’s original building (Fig. x) sur- vives in the southwestern portion of the prayer hall of the mosque in its final form (Fig. 2). A walled court- yard opened onto a wide hypostyle hall—together courtyard and hall originally measured about seventy- four meters square. The prayer hall roof is supported by columns sustaining ten arcades of twelve bays each, including a central aisle that is very slightly wider than the others and is also distinguished by red column shafts. Thus constructed, the building fits neatly into an established tradition of mosques with wide, dis- persed spaces that depend on the repetition of a single support to create a hall for community prayer. The Fig. Great Mosque of Cordoba, mosque of ‘Abd al-Rahman I, plan Fig. 2 Great Mosque of Cordoba as it appeared in 987 (a.1.377), plan. AL-ANDALUS grouping of supports to the south drew the worshiper in what was thought to be the direction of Mecca, but little else in the building design points to the notion of ahierarchy involved in the act of worship. The hypo- style plan as it appears in the first campaign of the Great Mosque of Cérdoba reflects the codification of an early Islamic space for prayer: It responds to the need for a communal gathering in which each individ- ual prays without the intervention of clergy or liturgy and in which the mosque’s users are comparatively unaffected by the kind of stridently hierarchical archi- tectural forms that such intermediaries inevitably excite.* This rather abstract account suggests a clarity in the mosque’s typology that completely fails to convey the startling originality of its interior space (Fig. 3). For the columns that support the hypostyle hall explode into a labyrinthine elevation of superimposed horseshoe- shaped arches composed of voussoirs in which deep red brick and white stone alternate. This carnivalesque solution converts a basic building type that is repeti- tious and by nature somewhat monotonous into a ‘ leeeeedeeee oe i. \ % | nw ac ef ls ls sli sl a lisFig. 3 Great Mosque of Cordoba, prayer hall of ‘Abd al-Rahman wild three-dimensional maze, a hall of mirrors in which the constant echo of arches and the unruly staccato of colors confuse the viewer, presenting a challenge to unravel the complexities these refinements, impose upon the mosque’s space. Interest in the mosque’s interior is created, then, not by the applica~ tion of a skin of decoration to a separately conceived building but by the transformation of the morphemes of the architecture itself: the arches and voussoirs. Because we share the belief that architectural compo- nents must by definition behave logically, their con- version into agents of chaos fuels a basic subversion of our expectations concerning the nature of architec- ture, The tensions that grow from these subverted expectations create an intellectual dialogue between building and viewer that will characterize the evolving design of the Great Mosque of Cérdoba for over two hundred years. The complex dialogue excited by this system of decoration can be seen as part of a subconscious collective experience common to many early Islamic societies: a struggle to create a language of archi- tectural forms for the mosque within an aniconic culture—a way of identifying a place of worship with Islam and of engaging an audience without resorting to storytelling. But there are also conscious meanings encased in the specific forms chosen, meanings that relate to the particular experience of ‘Abd al-Rahman | and his earliest Muslim successors who ruled al-Andalus. While the appearance and effect of the super- posed horseshoe arches in the Great Mosque of Cérdoba are startling, the practice of doubling arches in eleva- tion had precedents, though in more prosaic contexts and in visually divergent forms. In Mérida, for exam- ple, a Roman aqueduct combines piggyback arches with alternating brick and stone masonry, calling to mind the alternating voussoirs of the mosque (Fig. 4). Moreover, the Great Mosque of Cordoba consistently employed the horseshoe arch, an element of the indi- genous church-building tradition of both pre-Muslim and Muslim dominated Spain. And in proportion and construction, the arches of ‘Abd al-Rahman I's prayer hall are comparable to those of the church of San Juan de Baftos, built in the seventh century by the Visigothic king Recceswinth (Fig. 5). For a number of reasons, it should not be surprising to find that these THE EMIRATE, CALIPHATE, AND TAIFA PERIOD 134 Fig. 5 San Juan de Baios, portal AL-ANDALUS features at Cordoba were taken over from earlier structures. All of the capitals in the initial campaign of the G particular meaning that might inhibit their use in a Muslim context wa eat Mosque were spolia, and we know that no attached to the appropriation of individual parts of ruined churches and Roman civic buildings. Indeed, early mosque architecture is part of the late antique building tradition in the Mediterra- nean. Thus, it would not be unexpected to see the appropriation of solutions such as those suggested by an aqueduct, for instance, which would help Cordoban architects heighten the ceiling of the Great Mosque, while employing reused columns of varying heights. This said, however, we perhaps want to question whether the wild disposition of the mosque’s eleva~ tion can be interpreted merely as a response to the e adop- tion of an indigenous formal solution. I believe, rather, that the aqueduct of Mérida offered “Abd al-Rahman [a way to link his formidable act of pa- tronage with his heritage and his aspirations. For it pre practical need to elevate its roof or the passi nted him with local techniques and materials that could evoke the important monuments built by his forbears, the Umayyad caliphs of Syria. The Great Mosque of Damascus tops its colossal arcade of reusedcolumns with a second, diminutive series of arches, almost an interior clerestory, that raises the height of the roof and punctures the upper wall.’ An effect even closer to that achieved at the Great Mosque of Cérdoba can be found in the Umayyad city of ‘Anjar, where a double arcade of slender semicircular arches cuts a dizzying and monumental profile through the center of the urban fabric. Further, Cérdoba’s alternating voussoirs of brick and stone surely must be an inter- pretation, in an accessible and less expensive medium, of the opus sectile colored voussoirs typical of late antique revetment. Recently scholars have begun to question whether the original marble revetment of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem or the Great Mosque of Damascus might not have included vous- soirs of alternating colors.* When we remember that the aisles of the Great Mosque of Cérdoba run per- pendicular to the qibla in the manner of the mosque of al-Walid I in Jerusalem,’ the Spanish mosque emerges asa web of associations that link it with three of the most transcendent acts of patronage of the Umayyad caliphate in the Fertile Crescent. It is these fragments of architectural allusion that bring us to the heart of ‘Abd al-Rahman I’s personal concerns as a patron. As the last surviving Umayyad ruler of a Muslim land, ‘Abd al-Rahman I was deeply concerned with the authority provided him by virtue of his lineage. He had never forgotten the fate of his family or his own persecution by the ‘Abbasids, and he effected as complete a political separation from ‘Abbasid author- ity in Baghdad as was possible without claiming the caliphaté for himself. We know, however, that he felt enormous nostalgia for the homeland he had been forced to flee: He named at least one palace outside Cérdoba for an Umayyad country estate in Syria and wrote the following extraordinary poem to a single palm tree encountered on the Andalusian plain: In the midst of Rusifa has appeared to us 1 palm-tree in a Western land far from the home of palm-trees. So I said, this resembles me, for I also live in distant exile and sepa- rated by a great distance from my children and my family. Thou hast grown up ina foreign land and we are both exiled far from home.*° The poem reveals to us that memories of ‘Abd al- Rahman I's homeland had permeated the very heart of the emergent emirate as well as its political vocabu- lary. The lost Umayyad caliphate had quickly taken on both symbolic and emotional importance for the Umayyads of the emirate; it served not only as a political tool that demonstrated their heritage and right to rule but also as a source of identity ina frontier far from the familiar center of the Islamic world, So we can see in the extraordinary prayer hall of the Great Mosque of Cérdoba as it appeared at the time of ‘Abd al-Rahman I vigorous and spirited architectural solution that on many levels reflects the creative tensions of a new culture. On one hand, the use of indigenous materials and models signals that the Umayyads had early come to terms with both the gifts and the limitations of an existing architectural tradition. They in fact employed this tradition with enormous freedom and applied it in innovative ways in their ongoing search for an aniconic vocabulary of form. On the other hand, the conscious symbolic ‘meanings of the mosque design were based in an artis- tic dialogue with the centers of Islam: with Umayyad Syria of the past and with ‘Abbasid Baghdad of the present. Poised on the frontier of the Islamic world, ‘Abd al-Rahman I used the design of his most tran- scendent architectural commission to create a visual symbol of his usurped authority as the last Umayyad and of the survival of his family in a faraway land. If the immediacy of the first emir’s experience of exile was not felt by succeeding Umayyad princes, they continued to share his sense of identity with an Umayyad past. In each of the subsequent additions to the mosque, we can at once read an unswerving reverence for the raucous but meaningful forms in- troduced under ‘Abd al-Rahman I. Under ‘Abd al- Rahman II in 836 (4.1. 222) the prayer hall was extended eight bays to the south: This elongates the plan, while it respects the elevation of ‘Abd al- Rahman I's mosque. ‘Abd al-Rahman Il’s reverence for his predecessor's plan was not compromised, even though many new columns and capitals were fash- ioned expressly for the mosque. The willingness to make new architectural parts to correspond in propor- tion to those of the older prayer hall, which was composed of spolia, reminds us of the strong appeal exerted by consistency with the older scheme. This addition was completed by ‘Abd al-Rahman II's son Muhammad, who is said also to have constructed a THE EMIRATE, CALIPHATE, AND TAIFA PERIOD 1516 Fig. 6 Great Mosque of Cérdoba, Puerta de San Esteban magsiira, or reserved space in which the emir prayed, and to have restored the west door of the mosque, the Bab al-Wuzara?,"* popularly known as the Puerta de San Esteban, in 855/6 (4.1. 241) (Fig. 6). In the Bab al-Wuzara? we can also discern ten- sions between the creation of forms that gesture to the central Islamic lands and Muslim identity in particular and the use of indigenous materials and techniques and the new solutions they spawn. This door is dominated by a large blind horseshoe arch inscribed in an alfiz, a molding in a rectangular format. The arch itself is covered with false voussoirs that are alternately stucco reliefs and brick—a more elaborate version of those in the arcades within Above the entranceway is a design of three horseshoe arches, the whole crowned by a projecting cornice of crenellations supported by a row of roll corbels. The AL-ANDALUS horseshoe arch here becomes the center of a theme that exploits both the traditional disposition of the mosque’s interior and carved stucco decoration in a style identifiable with the Umayyad world. Al-Mundhir, Muhammad's son, added a trea- sury to the mosque, and ‘Abdallah, his successor, constructed a sabat, or covered passage, leading directly from the palace to a door of the mosque.** Ibn s fascinating for the picture it offers of the delicate balance among ruler, populace, and mosque construction. He relates that the construction of the arched passage was necessary only because ‘Abdallah wanted to “go unseen by the people when he wished to pray [so that] no one was obliged to stand up or watch his going out.’ The Hayyan’s story of this addition account carefully crafts a narrative that sees ‘Abdallah commissioning the passageway in response to the pious reproach of a doctor of law, who, upon seeing that the people rose when the prince entered the prayer hall, admonishes him to show more humility. ‘Abdallah constructs the passage only after he is unable to keep his subjects from standing upon his arrival. Of course, the theme of the text is humility, but I wonder if it does not subconsciously voice a displacement of the controversy concerning humility as it relates to such constructions and the person of the prince. ‘Abdallah’s sabat not only would prove extraordinarily convenient for the ruler but would also allow him to pass pri- vately with his entourage “screened from the eyes of the people until he reached the maqsura,”’ according to another account, ** thereby separating him from the populace and releasing him from the pressure of direct contact with his subjects. I think there is a good possibility that the elaborate justification offered by the text masks nascent tensions concerning the grow- ing isolation and insistence upon the dignity of the prince, as well as his license to make costly additions to the mosque. The Caliphate Ie is with the next patron of the mosque, ‘Abd al- Rahman III, that the fullest exploitation of princely dignity is put into play, as the emir declares himself caliph. This is an act accompanied most importantly by an impressive wave of patronage centered upon the palatine city of Madinat al-Zahra? but also marked by significant additions to the mosque by “Abd al-Rahman III. In 951 (a.1. 340) this ruler re-furbished the mosque’s courtyard, alternating piers and columns in a sequence that recalled the Great Mosque of Damascus, now two centuries old, and affirming for us the constant renewal of links with the Umayyad world as a source of Islamic identity and now of caliphal authority as well Possibly more significant, however, is his con- struction of the mosque’s first true minaret, of which the lower portion survives in the present cathedral bell tower (Fig. 7). Hisham I had already built a minaret in 793/g (A.H. 177), but Jonathan Bloom has recently demonstrated that this was most likely a sewmata, or staircase, minaret, which projected very little from the mass of the mosque itself." ‘Abd al-Rahman III's minaret of 951-52 (A.1. 340) was a true tower, a fact later chroniclers celebrate in elabo- rate descriptions. Of particular interest are its height —some claim it reached one hundred cubits—and its two independent internal staircases. The minaret was topped with a “domed pavilion” and “golden and sil- ver apples.’”*° Perhaps most important, as Bloom has shown, it was one of the first such structures to establish the tower minaret as a symbol of the pres- 7 Initially developed under the “Abbasids, in their own search for monumental forms to enhance ence of Islam." the authority of their newly proclaimed caliphate, the tower became a potent symbol of the presence of Sunni Islam when the Spanish Umayyads appropri- ated it. In particular, Bloom sees this minaret as the physical manifestation of a defiant stance against the Fatimids, for whom such towers were unacceptable. Indeed, when the Umayyads took Fez from the Fatimids, ‘Abd al-Rahman III himself commissioned the replacement of short sawma‘a minarets with tower minarets in the Spanish style in the city’s two principal mosques." By the death of ‘Abd al-Rahman III, then, strong symbolic meanings that interwove the Spanish Umay- yads with both the past and the present of the Islamic world had been associated with acts of patronage in the main congregational mosque of Cérdoba. By the ninth century, however, another cultural group had begun to have an effect on Spanish Muslims and the way they constructed a visual identity for themselves, and this dialogue seems to have had an impact, albeit subconscious and indirect, on the use of tower minatets. During a moment of extreme social and political stress in Cérdoba in the ninth century, a number of churchmen embarked on a dramatic movement of voluntary martyrdom, aimed at consolidating Chris- tian resistance to the cultural juggernaut of Islam. In response, Muslim authorities took measures to sup- press the aspec s of Christian worship that had a rhe- torical power over the Islamic cityscape. "? Christian polemic writers complained that they were obliged to shield their ears from the cries of the muezzin from his minaret and lamented in particular that, in viola- tion of earlier practice, the towers of their churches were torn down. The power of the minaret was seen as. comparable to that of a church tower. Albar of Cérdoba describes Muslims who hear the sound of Christian bells from bell towers: “They wail out repeatedly un- speakable things’ and, as Eulogius of Cérdoba says, “begin to exercise their tongues in all kinds of swear- ing and foulness.’*° Perhaps the tower minaret was adopted in the tenth century as.a reaction to the per- ceived power of the bell tower in the Christian communities of al-Andalus. Three generations after Fig. 7 Great Mosque of Cérdoba, cathedral bell tower (minaret with additions) THE EMIRATE CALIPHATE AND TAIFA PERIOD 1718 ttaaeaeens WBE Abd al-Rabmin WEB The insistence on the welfare of the public as well as the consultation of so many representatives (including the superintendent of pious foundations) hint that the opulent—and not altogether practical—building pro- grams that had come to link patronage to the aspirations of individual rulers had caused unease in the «mma, the community of the faithful. These tensions clearly grew from the disjuncture between the opulence and cost of the program and the extent to which the cost actually served the mma, as opposed to the consoli- dation of the power of the ruler. The second level of meaning of al-Hakam II's addition is a subconscious one.* It also grows from social unrest and concerns the impact of the Mozarabic turmoil of the century before. The reigns of ‘Abd al-Rahman III and al-Hakam II saw a closing of the rift between Muslims and subjected Christians in THE EMIRATE, CALIPHATE, AND TAIFAPERIOD 19E Gi Fig. 11 AL-ANDALUSal-Andalus, and in fact witnessed a landslide of con- versions to Islam.*5 How did a large population of recent converts and a relatively recent experience of the power of the Christian community's religious fervor affect the secure and consolidated reigns of the Spanish Umayyad caliphs? I believe they inspired an unconscious reactive adaptation of a Christian archi- tectural form in al-Hakam II’s addition, justas in the case of the tower minaret. Here this adaptation involved the space of a contemporary Mozarabic church, in particular in the three principal aisles that align with the mihrab and its ancillary doors and in the creation of the first mihrab in the history of Islam to take the form of a room.*® This kind of space was conceived centuries earlier to serve an ancient indige- nous Christian liturgy: three longitudinal aisles and a transverse space culminating in three rooms, the central one of which can be horseshoe shaped. The church of San Miguel de Escalada, completed in 913 (a.H. 301), provides the best parallel for this plan type (Fig. 12). The dependence of the mosque plan design on a Christian prototype is betrayed in a curious detail There is no practical reason for the entrances to the sabat and the treasury to be decorated in a way similar to the mihrab; this is totally unprecedented and even functionally misleading, explicable only in the context ofa formal parallel with three-apsed Christian churches. It has even been suggested that a procession that re- flected the Mozarabic liturgy might have taken place in this space.*7 Clearly, however, no conscious allusion to Chris- tianity was intended here. As a matter of fact, the elevation is transformed with an artistic vocabulary unique to the Islamic architecture of al-Andalus. The impossible intertwining of the screens of polylobed arches is a complex mannerist interpretation of ideas we traced in the original mosque, whereby a visual puzzle is created and architectural form fashions a de- sign that seems logically inconceivable. Further, the strongest visual associations here are not with Chris- tian churches but with the palace of Madinat al-Zahri?; indeed, some of the elaborate decorative vocabulary and variations on the basilical axial space that appear in al-Hakam II's additions to the mosque were de- vised at Madinat al-Zahra?. And it is no wonder that the parallels with this palace are so close: The addi- tions of al-Hakam II represent but one development ina movement throughout the Mediterranean that saw palatial forms imposed upon hypostyle mosque plans as a means of sanctifying the authority of rulers. The important issue to grasp is that, in the search for forms with rhetorical and authoritative force, Spanish Muslims not only mined the basilical spaces of secular palaces but also elaborated the effects and the ritual that inhabited those spaces through an understanding of the rhetorical force of a Christian liturgical build- ing.** This was a language of forms the Muslims of al-Andalus learned from the Christians, with whom they were constantly in contact, but it was a language they emptied of any Christian meaning, To what end this extraordinary appropriation was used, I will re- tum presently. ‘The third and final level of meaning to be drawn from the additions of al-Hakam II is both conscious and symbolic: It concerns the renewal of historical and visual links with the Umayyad caliphate, connections pursued with particular energy by the Spanish Umayyads in support of their own caliphate, which they had established only a generation before. Though this interpretation is the most obvious and well known of those discussed, it takes on a new texture against the backdrop of the more subconscious social tensions outlined above. The legends concerning the founding Fig.12 San Miguel de Escalada, Spain, plan THE EMIRATE, CALIPHATE, AND TAIFA PERIODof the mosque might well have developed at this moment, for the notion that the earliest Muslim in- habitants of al-Andalus might have shared a church ‘with Cérdoba’s Christian inhabitants presents a strik. ing literary parallel to the early histories of the Great Mosque of Damascus, the centerpiece of early Umayyad patronage in the first years of the eighth century. In terms of the mosque design, Christian Ewert has outlined for us a number of ways in which the axiality of the additions of al-Hakam II forms a di logue with the Umayyad past.>® It is, however, in the gibla wall constructed by al-Hakam II that we find the strongest support for the political idea that the Spanish caliphs sought to forge such connections. * One of the striking and curious aspects of the qibla of al-Hakam II is the presence in it of mosaic decora- tion. Mosaics had been unknown on the Iberian Peninsula for centuries and were little used in the contemporary Islamic world. Once again Ibn ‘Idhari supplies a justification for a feature of the mosque, now providing the official explanation for the mosaics, as well as their official meaning: “Al-Hakam had written to the king of the Christians on the subject [of the mosaic incrustations] and had ordered him to send a capable worker, in imitation of that which [the Umayyad caliph] al-Walid had done at the time of the construction of the Great Mosque of Damascus.’> The use of mosaic decoration was intended, then, to create a strong visual evocation of the Great Mosque of Damascus. It was not only another in the continu- ing series of links created between this mosque and the memory of the early Umayyads but also a fasci- nating gesture in which the caliph reminds the viewer of his presence as patron: Al-Hakam II negotiates with a Christian king (in this case, the Byzantine king) in an almost ceremonial repetition of what his ancestor, the Umayyad caliph in Damascus, had done over two hundred years earlier. The gibla wall combines other, more familiar forms, such as quartered marble and carved stucco inspired by both the early history of the Cérdoba mosque and the early centers of the Islamic world. The qibla’s associations are with the mosque’s own past as well as with the Great Mosque of Damascus: Weare told that al-Hakam II himself supervised the conservation and transferal of the columns that sup- port the mihrab arch from the mihrab of ‘Abd al- AL-ANDALUS. Rahman II, which had to be destroyed to accommodate this addition. The principal innovation in the qibla, however, was the introduction of Qur’anic inscrip- tions as the carrier of meaning for this opulent focal point. The inscriptions weave a path through the densely composed jungle of vegetal and geometric forms of the mosaic, adding to their cacophony and horror vacui; at times their status as writing is ob- scured by their integration into the overall abstract schema. In this way the writing becomes part of the visual dialogue present everywhere in the mosque: If we read it, it carries one kind of meaning; but as an abstract form, it also plays a role as part of the complex and meditative design of the mosque as a whole. Once again the viewer is engaged by an ambiguity in the relationship among parts. This time, however, what the puzzle reveals to the meditative viewer is some- thing more profound: the word of God, written in the language in which it was spoken. So the elusive script of al-Hakam II's qibla wall is sanctified both in its content and as part of a vast schematized puzzle of form. In the Quranic citations that embrace the three openings of the gibla, Oleg Grabar has seen evidence of a thematic development around the practice of prayer.>? For those who were able to read the inscrip- tions, this first use of Quranic writing to embellish a 4gibla linked an aniconic formal resolution with reli- gious meaning literally to create a kind of Muslim iconography: an engaging visual drama that carries a message without dependence on narrative. It is an iconography that communicates through intellect rather than empathy. Once again I think it is possible to interpret a new development in religious art as the result of contact with an active and vibrant Christian ‘community, and perhaps now also stimulated by the recent absorption of large numbers of former Chris- tians into the Muslim community. The idea of creat- ing an anicortic iconography—a nonfigurative art that, carries a specific religious message to its public—can be seen as a concept learned from generations of living side by side with Christians, for whom religious art was a message conveyed through figural iconography. Itis, however, borrowed across a cultural barrier, without any memory of or association with the figural religious iconography that was the catalyst for its development. What we find, then, is that the presence ofa strong Christian community stimulated the de- velopment of a number of new forms in the GreatMosque of Cérdoba— forms that lie at the heart of the uniqueness and creativity of the mosque without once betraying any association with Christian practice or identity. Part of the strength and originality of the Great Mosque of Cérdoba as a monument grew from the presence of an other — the challenge presented by confrontation with another culture. In the case of the qibla inscriptions, the taking over of such forms served not only the subconscious goal of appropriating certain powerful rhetorical fea- tures from Christian arts; it also buttressed the conscious program of the creation of a new caliphate, which sought to underline the hierarchy and legiti- macy of the new caliph. For the immediate model for the inscriptions, the model that transformed the Chris tian idea into a Muslim one for the builders of the mosque, was to be found in an Umayyad public monu- ment—the Dome of the Rock. Here seventh-century inscriptions conveyed lessons about the Muslim reli- gion and an image of Muslim victory to another lively non-Muslim community. The introduction of inscriptions and their inte- gration into the most lavish part of these additions to the mosque can be seen as an attempt to galvanize a measure of public investment in a program designed primarily to consolidate the authority of the new caliph- ate, Their use can on one level be seen as a redirec- tion of the opulent gibla program to prayer, the primary activity of the community in the mosque, an appropriate gesture in view of the earliest public reaction to the additions of al-Hakam II. This hypoth- esis is supported by one of the non-Quranic texts that wraps around the mihrab: “Praise be to God, master of the worlds who favored al-Hakam II, the servant of God, the prince of the faithful ... for this venerable construction and helped him in the building of this eternal place, with the goal of making this mosque more spacious for his subjects, something which both he and they greatly wanted.’5 Though the additions of al-Hakam II are teem- ing with conscious references to the political agenda of the caliphate—an agenda recognized and celebrated by later chroniclers—in the mosque inscriptions he states his purpose to be service to his subjects, a goal that might have been accomplished with significantly greater economy. Clearly the tensions between the needs of the umma and the license and exclusivity of the caliphate were great and not yet resolved when al-Hakam II’s subjects refused to pray in the new mosque. Despite a disjuncture between the political and public programs of the additions of al-Fiakam II, even this new religious iconography of prayer, as well as the other inscriptions on the qibla, takes inspiration from a model that buttresses the links between the old Umayyad caliphate of Syria and the new one of Cérdoba. The catalysts for the development of this first Qur°anic calligraphic program in a mosque may have been experience of the power of Christian didac- ticarts and the need for a way to justify the expensive arts of authority toa skeptical general public. As we have seen, the immediate model that provided an acceptable heritage for these goals was the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The additions of al-Hakam Il to the Great Mosque of Cérdoba bear witness to the peculiar set of circum- stances that created the Islamic society of al-Andalus. They demonstrate the need in a frontier peninsula to create a Muslim identity with links to the center of the Muslim world and also evidence the rich creativity that results from the challenge provided by the dia- logue with a divergent religion and culture. Finally, the hierarchical architectural vision nurtured in this. atmosphere exasperated the growing tensions between, the caliph and the community, between the use of pa- tronage as a means of asserting the power and exclusiv- ity of a caliph and the community’s dawning awareness. that those pretenses diminish both the pluralistic nature of their worship and their community coffers. The mosque becomes our document of the social tensions that are created by, and hover about, opulent hegemonic display. The Additions of al-Mansur In the reign of Hisham II, under the administration of his despotic and powerful minister al-Mangir, the entire character of the mosque was transformed. In 987/8 (a.H. 377/8) al-Mangiir added eight aisles to the east along the entire length of the mosque to provide room for the large number of Berber tribes that had settled in the capital. This addition, which repeats both the prayer hall elevation and portal type consistently used in the mosque, widens the prayer hall once more, disrupting the symmetry of the mihrab of al-Hakam II and dislocating the axis and hierarchy of the caliph’s long directional plan (Fig. 2). THE EMIRATE, CALIPHATE, AND TAIFA PERIOD 2324 Fig. 13. Great Mosque of Cérdoba, Catedral de Santa Maria, dome Texts that speak of this last addition, executed on the eve of the fall of the caliphate, describe a more restrained insular attitude toward patronage than had existed earlier: Ibn ‘Idhari, for example, says curtly that what al-Mangiir sought in his work was above all solidity and finish, but not ornamentation, though his enlargement is not inferior to the other enlargements in the edifice, except the work of al-Hakam II.®* His- torians also chronicle with evident approbation both al-Mansirr’s more conservative polarized attitude toward the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula and the way in which this position becomes part of his myth as a patron of the Great Mosque. For it was at this moment that al-Mansiir “ordered the bells of the church [of Santiago] be removed to Cordoba on the shoulders of Christian captives, to be suspended {as lamps] from the ceiling of the Great Mosque.””7 Al-Maggari, who transmitted this remark of Ibn Hayyan’s, goes on to say that al-Mansiir’s addition was “rendered still more meretorious by the circum- stance of Christian slaves from Castile and other infidel countries working in chains at the building instead of the Moslems, thus exalting the true religion and trampling down polytheism.’* This severe ap- proach to both patronage and Christians as a group AL-ANDALUS. suggests that a reaction was in force against the per- ceived excesses of a new caliphate under al-Hakam II From Mosque to Cathedral On June 29, 1236 (a.11. 634), Cérdoba fell to the hands of Ferdinand III, king of Castile. In that same year Ferdinand and a number of bishops purified the Great Mosque of Cérdoba for Christian worship, consecrat- ing it as the Catedral de Santa Maria. At first alter- ations to the building constructed for Muslim worship were few and insignificant: The incorporation of occa- sional chapels and burials subtly transformed corners of the Muslim space. Later in the thirteenth century the Capilla Real, a pantheon for the kings of Castile, wa: constructed in the Mudejar style. The building of this chapel, which was decorated with Arabic inscrip- tions and carved stucco ornament, must have consti- tuted an attempt to appropriate the potency of the vanquished Muslim caliphate by inserting Castilian royal burials within its most formidable monument. The Great Mosque of Cérdoba was part of the myth of Cérdoba as a world capital, as the center of a powerful, apparently invincible culture; its visual forms had come to embody the Islamic presence on the peninsula in all of its intriguing and threatening implications. The Christians who conquered Cérdoba understood that there was much more power to be gained from appropriating this extraordinary metaphor of their conquest than from destroying it. By the end of the fifteenth century, a Gothic nave and choir, the Capilla Mayor, subtly defined a Chris- tian space for worship. However, no act more clearly illustrates the need of the Cordoban ecclesiastical hege- mony to harness and transform the meaning of the former mosque than the construction of a vast cathe- dralat its center starting in 1523 (Fig. 13). Despite the opposition of the city council, which vociferously promoted the preservation of the mosque in its origi- nal form, the canons won their suit to build a church within it and began a construction campaign that would not be complete until the end of the eighteenth century. Designed primarily by three generations of the Hernan Ruiz family, the cathedral sprouts imper- tinently from the mosque’s flat prayer hall and uses a dome and a clearly defined nave to proclaim its Chris- tian identity to all who view the mosque from with- out, visually appropriating the minaret as a bell tower, Its interior reveals a vast, radiantly lit space,featuring Gothic tracery, classical orders, and an enor- mous array of Rehaissance sculpture. These figures are at times inscribed in the earlier horseshoe arches with polychrome masonry, as if to give the Islamic architectural decoration the focal points and narrative subjects the Christian viewer misses. On the other hand, many of the vaults and walls are executed in the Plateresque style, in which abstract patterning of Gothic tracery reminds us that even architectural styles appropriate to Spanish churches contain di- gested Muslim forms, the mark of over seven hundred years of cohabitation with Islamic culture. ‘The emperor Charles V; who had originally sup- ported the canons in their petition to build within the mosque, is recorded to have remarked upon seeing the new cathedral: “You have taken something unique and turned it into something mundane." And yet ‘we must not forget that this was the same man who carved a massive Renaissance palace into the site of the Alhambra. The ambiguous meanings that clung to the Muslim and Christian visual languages did not disappear with the Christian conquest; instead they provided fertile ground for the definition, this time, of anew Christian artistic identity. The Great Mosque of Cérdoba was a strong statement of Muslim identity, one conceived to link the Muslims of al-Andalus to Syria and the ancient center of the Islamic world. But on some level it was also understood by Christians and Muslims alike as an intrinsically Spanish monu- ment, one that reflected the peculiar interchanges and tensions between Islamic and Christian visual cul- tures. Appropriation of such a building meant that sixteenth-century Christians had begun to incorpo- rate apart of the Muslim visual world into their own, making it a sign of all that was powerful and elegant for a new Christian hegemony. Cited by Ibn ‘dharisg01—4, vol. 2, p. 378. - Creswell 19408, p. 139. bid Fora discussion of the development of early mosques, see Grabar 1987, pp. 99-133. An absence of hierarchical organization charac- terizes the earliest mosques, though in a number of important prayer halls, pronounced central axes appear. Grabar discusses the particular way in which early mosque design uses the components of church architecture but subverts the natural hierarchy of its axial form, so that elements lke aisles can appear without the culiminatory effect they have in a Christan basilica (pp. 18-19) 5. Ontthe issue of the relationship between the Great Mosque of Cérdoba and the aqueduct of Mérida, see Margais 1926, p. 231; ‘Gémez-Moreno 1951, p. 36. Foran excellent technical analysis, see Ewert 966, pp. 12-14 %. 5. 36. %. 8 9. 2. 24, 35, 36. 27 28 29. 30. a 3 34 35: 36. 37 39. ‘The history and meaning of the horseshoe arch have been widely discussed since Gémez-Moreno set the tone for its careful histori- «al study (1906). Camps Cazorla examined proportion and tech- nigue (1953). More recently, Caballero Zoreda has rewritten the history ofthe form in light of discoveries ofthe last forty years (0977-78). Finally, lattempt to understand the meaning of the form on the Iberian Peninsula through the year 1000 (Dodds 1990) ‘The idea that the inspiration for the Great Mosque of Cérdoba ight derive from the elevation at Damascus was developed by Franz (1958) Fora review of the literature concerning this problem, see Dodds 3990, p. 364, . 50. For bibliography on this issue, se ibid, p. 163, n. 47 3. Cited in Ibn “dhatt ago1—4, vol. 2, pp. 95-96, trans. in Creswell 19408, p. 139. Brisch 196. Ibn ‘Ichi 1901-4, vol. 2, pp. 380-8, cited in Creswell 19400, P40. Ibn Hayyan, “al-Mugiabis i Ta’sikh Andalus,” Oxford MS, fol. 27a, , cited in Creswell 19409, pp. 140-41. Ibid, fol. 28a, cited in Creswell 19408, p. 143. Bloom 1986, chap. 7 Al-Maggari 1840-43, vol 1, pp. 224-25, cited in Creswell 19408, pete Bloom 1986, p. 106 Ibid, chap. 7. ‘This argument is developed in Dodds 1990, pp. 102-4 Albar of Cérdoba,Indiculus luminosws, 6, trans. in Colbert 1962, . 276; Eulogius of Cordoba, Memorials, Lib. I, 23, this author's trans. Fora discussion ofthe interlacing arches, see Ewert 1966. ‘Al-Maggar 1840-43, vol. 1p. 219, cited in Creswell 19408, p.143. Ibn “Ahir x901~4, vol. 2, p. 390. Dodds 1990, pp. 94-106. See Glick 1979, p. 187; Bulliet 1979, pp. 317-26. Kroeber describes “the idea of the complex or system which is accepted, but it remains for the receiving culture to develop a new content” (1940, p. 1). text that is important for the application of such methods to the study of Spain is Glick end Pi-Sunyer 1960. Grabar 1988; Dodds 1990, pp. 94-106. Dodds 1990, pp. 94-106. For analysis ofthe possible relationship between the establishment of the Great Mosque of Damascus and that of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, see Terasse 1932, . 59, n. 2; Creswell 96, pp. 187-96; Creswell 19402, pp. 138-39; Gémez-Moreno 1951, pP. 24-29; Ocaiia Jiménez. 1942 Ewert and Wisshak 1981 This has been recognized by a series of scholars, not least among them Stern (1976) Ibn ‘idhart 1901-4, vol. 2. 392, this author's trans. from the French; see also Stern 1976, pp. , 28. Grabar 1988, pp. 116-17. Grabar 1987, pp. 46-70; Grabar1959, pp. 33~62, reprinted in Grabar 1976, I Lévi-Provengal 193, no. 12, pp. 15-6. Creswell 19400, p. 144, citing Ibn ‘Idhri 19014, vol. 2, p. 392. Al-Maggatl 1840-43, vo. 2, p. 196. Ibid, vol. 1p. 228. Ramirez de las Casas-Dezs 1837, p. 197. THE EMIRATE, CALIPHATE, AND TAIFA PERIOD 25