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The Great Mosque of Cordoba
Professor Jerrilynn Dodds
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Great Mosque of Cordoba, Aerial View
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Great Mosque of Cordoba, Plan
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Great Mosque of Cordoba, Puerta de San Esteban |
8th century
The Great Mosque of Cordoba was the most important public project
of Abd
al Rahman I the last surviving Umayyad. When his family,
which had held the Caliphate, was deposed and murdered during
the Abbasid revolution, Abd al-Rahman escaped and came to the
Iberian Peninsula with an army supplied by his maternal grandfather
in North Africa. This mosque, which would represent the first
established Islamic rule on the peninsula, appropriated the
city center; and inscribed the public meeting space with architectural
forms that proclaimed a new order with its open sprawling hypostyle
plan.
However it combined the new with a familiar, indigenous language
of forms: Horseshoe
arches were fashioned or painted with alternating voussoirs.
These forms evoked both Umayyad hegemony in Damascus (alternating
voussoirs -- in Damascus and Jerusalem are made in the Late
Roman way with Opus
Sectile (*), here, where there is no marble, they are constructed
of alternating stone and brick). Umayyad oneness reflects local
identity and tradition: horseshoe arches, which derive from
architecture of the Visigothic period; Corinthian capitals,
which are part of the continuous classical tradition shared
by the Umayyads and the indigenous Spanish Roman culture. These
are featured architectural elements, but the player is placed
in a space clearly structured, parented, by the new regime.
(See: Jerrilynn Dodds, (in) Al Andalus, "The Great Mosque of
Cordoba," pp. 11ff.)
The arcades are doubled: superposed, making what could have
been a monotonous interior complex and puzzling. The color and
complexity of the elevation engage one; the architectural forms,
taken apart and reassembled (alternating voussoirs, superposed
arches) become the morphemes of an abstract decorative scheme.
10th Century
Though the Abbasids are still in power, the Umayyads of Cordoba
determine to claim right to be Caliphs themselves. Abd
al Rahman III does this, and builds a tall "minaret" for
the mosque and expands the sahn, so that it resembles the plan
of the sahn at Damascus.
Other changes made to the mosque by his son al-Hakam
II are intended to link the mosque to the lost days of Umayyad
hegemony in Damascus, reminding others of their ancient claim
to the Caliphate: in particular, an elaborate Qibla wall with
mosaics evoke the mosaics used by Umayyads at Damascus.
However the search for ceremonial and architectural forms
which might express this new authority also include a basilical
structure of three aisles inscribed in the hypostyle additions
of al Hakam II (view down aisle). These culminate in the mihrab
and two side doors (one, a treasury, and the other, the Caliph's
private entrance to the mosque) which resemble a Christian
church (three doors). Clearly no allusion to Christianity
is implied here; rather, Christian worship's rhetorical power,
commented on by more than one Umayyad writer, is appropriated
here in the interests of promoting the authority of the new
Caliphate. In this spirit, the form was probably meant to
be perceived as a palatine one, for a similar three-aisled
basilica, culminating this time in a single horseshoe arch,
had been built earlier in the Umayyad palace of Madinat al-Zahra.
briefing
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