This Colourful Art Style Developed on the Iberian Peninsula

Known locally equally Mezquita-Catedral, the Great Mosque of Cordoba is one of the oldest structures nonetheless standing from the fourth dimension Muslims ruled Al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia including most of Spain, Portugal, and a small-scale section of Southern France) in the late 8th century. Cordoba is a ii hr train ride south of Madrid, and draws visitors from all over the earth.

Temple/Church/Mosque/Church

Figure one. Great Mosque of Cordoba from the Air

The buildings on this site are as circuitous equally the extraordinarily rich history they illustrate. Historians believe that there had first been a temple to the Roman god, Janus, on this site. The temple was converted into a church by invading Visigoths who seized Corboba in 572. Next, the church was converted into a mosque and and so completely rebuilt past the descendants of the exiled Umayyads—the start Islamic dynasty who had originally ruled from their capital Damascus (in present-twenty-four hour period Syria) from 661 until 750.

A New Uppercase

Following the overthrow of his family in Damascus by the incoming Abbasids, Prince Abd al-Rahman I escaped to southern Spain. One time there, he established command over almost all of the Iberian Peninsula and attempted to recreate the grandeur of Damascus in his capital, Cordoba. He sponsored elaborate building programs, promoted agriculture, and even imported fruit trees and other plants from his former home. Orangish copse still stand in the courtyard of the Mosque of Cordoba, a beautiful, if bittersweet reminder of the Umayyad exile.

The Hypostyle Hall

The building itself was expanded over 2 hundred years. It is comprised of a large hypostyle prayer hall (hypostyle means, filled with columns), a courtyard with a fountain in the middle, an orange grove, a covered walkway circling the courtyard, and a minaret (a tower used to call the faithful to prayer) that is now encased in a squared, tapered bell tower. The expansive prayer hall seems magnified by its repeated geometry. It is built with recycled aboriginal Roman columns from which sprout a striking combination of ii-tiered, symmetrical arches, formed of stone and crimson brick.

Figure 2. Hypostyle Hall, Neat Mosque at Cordoba, Spain, begun 786 and enlarged during the ninth and 10th centuries

The Mihrab

The focal point in the prayer hall is the famous horseshoe biconvex mihrab or prayer niche. A mihrab is used in a mosque to identify the wall that faces Mecca—the birth place of Islam in what is now Saudi Arabia. This is practical as Muslims face up toward Mecca during their daily prayers. The mihrab in the Not bad Mosque of Cordoba is framed past an exquisitely decorated arch backside which is an unusually large space, the size of a small room. Gold tesserae (minor pieces of glass with aureate and color backing) create a dazzling combination of night blues, cherry-red browns, yellows and golds that course intricate calligraphic bands and vegetal motifs that adorn the arch.

The Horseshoe Arch

Figure 3. Cordoba Mezquita—Mihrab (panorama)

The horseshoe-mode arch was mutual in the architecture of the Visigoths, the people that ruled this expanse after the Roman empire collapsed and before the Umayyads arrived. The horseshoe arch eventually spread across North Africa from Morocco to Arab republic of egypt and is an easily identified feature of Western Islamic architecture (though there are some early examples in the East as well).

The Dome

Above the mihrab, is an equally dazzling dome. Information technology is built of crisscrossing ribs that create pointed arches all lavishly covered with golden mosaic in a radial pattern. This amazing building technique anticipates later Gothic rib vaulting, though on a more modest scale.

The Great Mosque of Cordoba is a prime example of the Muslem world's ability to brilliantly develop architectural styles based on pre-existing regional traditions. Here is an extraordinary combination of the familiar and the innovative, a formal stylistic vocabulary that tin can exist recognized equally "Islamic" even today.

Figure 4. Mihrab Dome

Figure 5. Rib Detail, Mihrab Dome

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-arthistory1/chapter/great-mosque-of-cordoba/

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