Month: November 2024

The trip from Córdoba to Granada was generally uneventful, but had its noteworthy moments nonetheless. En route to Granada we passed through a district of the province of Andalusia known as la Subbética, which as far as I know includes no major cities or major tourist attractions other than the Sierras Subbéticas Natural Park, which we were not fortunate enough to visit, but which is home to a wide diversity of plants and animals, and a stronghold of the peregrine falcon. Our encounter with la Subbética was limited mainly to a rest stop on the N-432 highway at Nicol’s Restaurant, near the town of Luque. However, this proved to be of great interest to me as a showcase, as it were, of small-town Spanish life. The closest analogy I can think of is a roadside cafe in Midwestern America. But this was an area primarily devoted to the cultivation of olive trees and the production of olive oil, and Nicol’s was a market for that commodity as much or more than a roadside diner.

The olive groves and factory where the oil was produced were close behind the restaurant. Between the roadhouse and the olive groves there was a parklike area suitable for strolling, relaxing and picnicking according the needs of the moment. Although there was no railroad line, there were two railroad cars in back of the establishment, which puzzled me until I figured out that they provided the refrigerator for the business. Judging from the remains of an old horse trough, stone benches and other antique artifacts adorning the site. this place must have functioned as a travelers’ stop from time immemorial.

Resuming our journey, we continued across the rolling Andalusia countryside with its endless olive groves. Racing the oncoming twilight, we were able to catch late-afternoon views of picturesque towns and castles such as Castro del Rio and its hilltop fortress, until the curtain of darkness ended the show.

The mihrab, the holiest place in a Muslim mosque, is ordinarily a semicircular niche in a wall indicating the qibla, the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca towards which Muslims face when praying. The wall on which a mihrab appears is therefore known as the ‘qibla wall’. The mihrab in the Mezquita is an exception to the usual pattern in that it is a small room behind a lavishly decorated door. The caliphs also added a maqsura, a screened-off prayer space in front of the mihrab, reserved for the ruler, intended to ensure his privacy and protect him from assassination.

The Castilians of the Reconquista era unaccountably felt no obligation to pray to Mecca, and they had insufficient appreciation of the esthetic value of the mihrab as well. In the 14th century they converted it into the chapel of Saint Peter, where the consecrated host was stored before the completion of the new Capilla Mayor in the 17th century.

In the 19th century, however, the Spanish began to rediscover the cultural heritage left by the Moors, and restoration work began on the mihrab and maqsura that has continued to the present; so visitors are now able to see it in its full glory.

The mihrab is located at the south wall of the Mezquita just to the west of the Chapel of St. Teresa. On either side of it are two doors. The door on the left (facing the wall) of the mihrab, called the Bab Bayt al-Mal, led to the mosque treasury, which of course is now the cathedral treasury. The one on the right, the Bab al-Sabat, led to a passage (sabat) connecting the mosque to the caliph’s palace. The mihrab and the doors are lavishly decorated with mosaics and inscriptions from the Quran. The maqsura encloses the area in front of the doors in a set of intricate polylobed interlocking arches, which also serve to bear the weight of the three domes covering this space. No words can possibly convey the esthetic impact of viewing this astounding ensemble, which must be viewed in person to be fully appreciated. The pictures shown here can convey only a pale shadow of the reality. It was the culmination of our visit to the Mezquita and to the fabulous city of Córdoba.

Before leaving the Mezquita, I want to present a few glimpses of some of the detail-work of the walls and arches that has perhaps been neglected elsewhere. These serve as a reminder of the capabilities of the Moorish and Mudéjar craftsmen who built the mosque and continued its maintenance and transformation after the Christians took over, up until they were expelled from Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries.

We exited the Mezquita as we had entered, via the Patio de los Naranjos. As we emerged I caught sight of a young couple making out on the patio, and took a quick shot of them; the muchacho, probably an American, took a shot right back at me with his phone camera.

On our way out of the Patio de los Naranjos, Sandie took four superb photos of the Mezquita’s magnificent Campanario (Bell Tower). This began as a minaret, completed in 958 under the auspices of Abd al-Rahman III, the first Caliph. Although the Christians converted it into a bell tower after the Reconquista of 1236, they made few substantial changes at first, other than to put a cross on top. But in 1589 the tower was badly damaged in a storm, and rather than merely repairing the damage, the authorities decided to redo it in Renaissance style. They entrusted the work to Hernán Ruiz III, the latest member of the dynasty who had begun the new Capilla Mayor. The Ruiz family seem to have been singularly unlucky in completing their projects, since Hernán III, impeded by the neglect of his sponsors to fund his work, died in 1606, leaving it unfinished. The reconstruction was completed under another architect in 1617. But even that was not final; serious flaws in the construction, and further extensive damage storms and earthquakes, ensured that major modifications would continue throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. One significant enhancement, in 1664, involved the placement of a new cupola on top, crowned by a statue of Saint Raphael.

From the Mezquita, we embarked on the final phase of our visit to the wondrous city of Córdoba – an exploration of the Old Quarter. For that, a new post is in order.

The Mezquita of Córdoba contains a traditional cruciform cathedral inside a Muslim mosque. How that came to be is a story worth telling.

By 1523 Carlos I was both King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V. The Bishop of Córdoba (and later Inquisitor General as well as Cardinal), Alonso Manrique de Lara, wanted to build a new cathedral in Renaissance style. The Córdoba city council vehemently opposed this idea. The bishop appealed to Charles V, who, being a devout Catholic, gave him the go-ahead. Later, upon seeing the (unfinished) result in 1526, Charles V is supposed to have said something like “You have built what you or anyone else might have built anywhere; to do so you have destroyed something that was unique in the world.” I very much doubt whether Charles V said anything of the sort; he was responsible for demolishing a Moorish palace in the Alhambra in order to build a Renaissance residence for himself, so it seems unlikely that the Córdoba project vexed his esthetic sensibilities. But somebody said something like it, and I agree: the cathedral, occupying the central section of the mosque, is a worthy endeavor, considered one of the best in Spain, but one can see similar achievements in Seville or Burgos, and I would rather have seen the Mezquita in its pre-1523 state. In any case Charles V did not see the final result, since it was not completed in his lifetime.

On the other hand, it has been observed that had the cathedral not been built inside the mosque, as opposed to another location in the city, the mosque might not have survived at all; making it a Christian holy place ensured its sanctity.

In any case, the architect chosen to design the cathedral, Hernán Ruiz, fortunately had a high regard for Moorish architecture and displayed considerable sensitivity in preserving as much of the mosque as possible while fulfilling the prescriptions of the sponsors. He started the construction of the nave, but died in 1547, leaving his son, also named Hernán Ruiz, to continue his work. Hernán Ruiz II built the walls of the transept, but he died in 1569, leaving the project still unfinished, and it was then entrusted to Juan de Ochoa, who completed the ceilings of the nave and transept in 1607. But even this was not the end result; the Capilla Mayor still needed an altarpiece, which was begun in 1618, and finished in 1653. During this prolonged period of construction, artistic fashions evolved considerably, so that the cathedral incorporated several different architectural styles – Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque.

As a consequence of all these changes, the number of columns in the Mezquita was reduced from 1250 to a mere 856.

The cruciform cathedral has four main sections: the Capilla Mayor, which contains the High Altar; the Choir; the Transept, which forms the arms of the cross and contains the Crucero, or Crossing, separating the Capilla Mayor from the Choir; and the Trascoro, or retro-choir, a space at the back of the choir for the clergy and altar-ministrants to assemble.

We first encountered the cathedral by way of the Trascoro. The wall separating it from the choir is decorated with a set of columns framing two doors presumably connecting to the choir, presided over by a relief nestled in an upper alcove depicting St. Peter seated in a chair at the heavenly gates.

The orientation of Ruiz father and son was primarily Gothic, and this is reflected in the high vaults and walls of the cathedral. But it was Ochoa who completed the choir ceiling and the dome over the transept, and he was a Mannerist. I won’t attempt to explain Mannerism here, but in short, it was an outgrowth of Renaissance styles characterized by elongated proportions, highly stylized poses, and lack of clear perspective. To me, Ochoa’s ceilings appear simply as Renaissance art.

Yet the final appearance of the choir section is neither Gothic nor Renaissance, because it was only finished in the 1750s, when the Baroque sculptor Pedro Duque Cornejo installed 53 intricately decorated choir stalls which he had carved in mahogany wood. The west end of the choir is dominated by an episcopal throne, also by Duque Cornejo, dated 1752, and designed like an altarpiece, with three aisles and a depiction of the Ascension of Christ into heaven on the upper vault, topped off by a statue of the archangel Rafael.

The altarpiece of the Capilla Mayor, begun in 1618, was not finished until 1653, and even then changes were made later. A Jesuit, Alonso de Matias, designed it in the Mannerist style, structuring it in three aisles separated by dual composite capital columns, and two levels above the base. Occupying the central bay of the altarpiece is a towering splendid Tabernacle, which displays the consecrated Host. Directly above the tabernacle is a painting of the Assumption of Mary, while the side bays are filled with canvases featuring martyrs of the Church, all by Antonio Palomino, a court painter from Madrid. Palomino received his commission for these paintings in 1713, when Europe was already well into the Baroque era, and they replaced originals which were also Baroque in style.

Just outside the Capilla Mayor, on either side of the transept, are two imposing Baroque pulpits carved in black marble, mahogany and bronze by a French sculptor, Michel Verdiguier, who completed them in 1779. They are dedicated to the writers of the Gospels: the one on the right, to Matthew and Mark, the one on the left to Luke and John.

Every proper cathedral has to have a sacristy or treasury, and the one in the Mezquita is located on its south side, in the Capilla de Santa Theresa, where we headed after viewing the Capilla Mayor. The Chapel of Saint Teresa was a late addition, having been founded in 1697 by the Bishop of Córdoba at the time, Cardinal Pedro de Salazar. He was a devotee of St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), the great Spanish mystic and religious reformer, and patron saint of those who suffer from headaches. Salazar intended it to be a funerary chapel for himself and his family, as well as a sacristy, and he is indeed buried there. He located the chapel, appropriately, in the same place where the treasury of the mosque had been centuries before.

The most striking of the many sacred objects displayed in the Treasury is the Processional Custody of Corpus Christi. This is a gold and silver monstrance, a container where the consecrated Host is displayed for veneration during ceremonial processions. It was the creation of two artists, one of whom, Enrique de Arfe (1475-1545), was of German origin (birth name Heinrich von Harff), but apparently worked all his professional life in Castile. He is credited with introducing Renaissance innovations in precious metalworking to Spain. In the seventeenth century the Spanish silversmith Bernabé García de los Reyes augmented Arfe’s work with a new base and other additions, completing the monstrance in its present form.

A number of other historically significant and precious gold and silver sacred objects were on display – processional crosses, reliquaries, scepters, etc. No less imposing were the paintings and sculptures in the Treasury. Almost all of them are products of the Baroque era, late 17th and early 18th century. There are eight statues of saints and church fathers by the celebrated sculptor José de Mora Exposito of Granada, placed between the arches of the chapel. And of course there had to be a sculpture of Saint Teresa of Avila, also by de Mora, which presides over the altarpiece of the chapel. I don’t have a photo of it, but a better one than I could have obtained may be seen here. She is depicted holding a book with a dove on her shoulder.

Two famous but anonymous paintings, located over the chapel doors, represent The Immaculate Conception and The Assumption of Mary. But I was more drawn to three canvases by Antonio Palomino illustrating scenes from the history of the city of Córdoba: The Martyrdom of Saint Acisclus and Saint Victoria, The appearance of Saint Raphael before Father Roelas, and The conquest of Cordoba by Fernando III the Saint. The last of these is the only one associated with a verifiable historical episode: it depicts the triumphant entrance of King Ferdinand (Fernando) III into Córdoba in 1536. We did not photograph it, but you may see it here. The other two deal with episodes which I would describe as legendary, but which Córdobans certainly believed to be true. The Appearance of St. Raphael to Father Roelas is the last of several occurrences in which the guardian angel of Córdoba is supposed to have revealed himself to local clerics to announce his divine appointment as custodian of the city. The Martyrdom canvas depicts an episode from 304 CE, during the persecutions of Diocletian, in which the Roman prefect of Córdoba had the youth Acisclus and his sister Victoria tortured and killed for refusing to abjure their Christian faith. They were later made patron saints of the city.

Before leaving the Treasury, I want to show a few items we observed there which were of less exalted character than the sacred objects pictured above, but which we found intriguing for one reason or another. I have not been able to find out much about these more mundane pieces, but they are worth presenting nonetheless.

The Treasury is situated next to the Mihrab, which I’ll deal with in the next post, where I conclude our visit to the Mezquita.

Córdoba was for a time one of the largest and most populous cities in the world. The time was circa 800-1000 CE, when its main rivals were Constantinople, Baghdad and Chang-an. Chang-an, for readers unfamiliar with China, was the capital of the Tang dynasty, which ruled the greatest empire in the world of that day. Chang-an was a long way from Baghdad and Constantinople, and the inhabitants of the western world knew nothing about China then. But they did know about Córdoba.

In 712 CE the armies of Islam conquered the Iberian peninsula. At that time the center of power in the Islamic world was the city of Damascus, ruled by the Umayyad Caliphate. But in 750 the Abbasid family overthrew the Umayyads and massacred nearly all of them. One of the few survivors, Abd al-Rahman, escaped and established an emirate in Iberia, al-Andalus, making his capital in Córdoba. While the new Abbasid Caliphate made Baghdad their capital, the successors of Abd al-Rahman proclaimed their own caliphate in Córdoba, and from there dominated Iberia as well as North Africa for the following two centuries.

Under the successors of Abd al-Rahman Córdoba became both an economic powerhouse and the leading center of learning in the Western world. Muslims, Christians and Jews congregated and worked there, with the Christians absorbing the lost scholarship of antiquity, transmitted to them by Muslim and Jewish scholars, and then disseminating that learning to the unlettered barbarian kingdoms of northern Spain and France.

Those northern Spanish barbarian kingdoms had almost immediately begun to coalesce and expand after the Muslim conquest of the eighth century. At first they made little headway against the power of the Caliphate of Córdoba, which dominated the south but tended to disregard the northern regions as poor and backward. But eventually, in the eleventh century, civil war tore apart al-Andalus and the relentless advance of the Reconquista began in earnest. In 1236 the forces of Ferdinand III of Castile took control of Córdoba once and for all.

For a while Córdoba continued to prosper under the Christian kings. The first Córdobans whose fortunes took a turn for the worse were the Jews, who had experienced a golden age under the Islamic caliphate. Especially after the ascent of Henry II to the throne of Castile, the Jews of Castile experienced increasing discrimination and persecution, and in the pogroms of 1391 the Jewish community of Córdoba was decimated. Until the late sixteenth century, however, Córdoba remained a large and thriving city; after that, a long decline ensued, and was reversed only in the twentieth century. Nowadays it is a city of medium size, with 325,708 inhabitants in 2018.

Our visit to Córdoba began on the west bank of the Guadalquivir River, where the heart of the old city lies. At that point the river is spanned by a fabled stone bridge which has been in existence at least since the first century BCE, though it has been rebuilt, restored and repaired many times over the centuries. For two thousand years, until the 20th century, it was the only bridge over the Guadalquivir at Córdoba. Now there are several, and the Old Roman Bridge has been restricted to pedestrian traffic since 2004. The Moorish rulers built two towers, one at each end of the bridge. The tower at the east end, called the Calahorra Tower, still stands in something like its original form.

A little way downstream of the Roman bridge on the west bank of the Guadalquivir stands the Albolafia Mill, another relic of antiquity. It may have originally been built by the Romans, along with several others, but in its present form it dates from the days of Moorish rule. Water was extremely important to the originally desert-dwelling Arabs and their Berber co-religionists, who all made extensive use of hydraulic technology throughout their domains; their word for water-wheel, noria, was adopted into Castilian Spanish, and from there spread to English as well. In Moorish times the Albolafia noria, turned by the force of the river’s current, poured water into an adjacent aqueduct, which then piped the water into emir’s palace and the city beyond. Most of the aqueduct has not survived the vicissitudes of time, but one arch is still standing and is visible in some of our photos.

The mill survived the Reconquista, but in 1492 Queen Isabella, who was staying in Córdoba, complained that the noise of the noria gave her a headache and had it dismantled. Actually, the headache was probably also a result of the ceaseless entreaties of Christopher Columbus, who visited Córdoba at that time to present one of his many petitions to her and her husband to fund his venture to the Indies. However that may be, the noria must have been rebuilt in the following century, because the Albolafia was converted sometime during that period to serve as a flour mill, and wheels are necessary to grind flour, no? In any case, the flour mill ceased operation in the 20th century, and the city council had to hire an antiquarian architect in the ’60s to reconstruct the noria. In its current incarnation, which is supposedly an exact replica of the original, the noria is a very impressive structure, and in addition to being a major tourist attraction, the mill is a godsend to the local cats, who feast on food provided by the operators.

We disembarked from our tour bus next to the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos, the palace in which Ferdinand and Isabella were living when Columbus came to pester them about financing his maritime ventures. Time did not permit us to explore the interior of the palace, which was unfortunate because it is considered a prime example of Mudejar architecture; but we did take numerous photos of its rather forbidding exterior as well as of the neighborhood around it. The Córdoba Alcázar began as a fortress of the Visigoths and became the emir’s palace under Moorish rule; in 1328, about a hundred years after the Christians retook Córdoba from the Moors, King Alfonso XI of Castile ordered a new palace built on the site, so that it was thenceforth known as the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos, the Alcázar of the Christian Kings, even though it still looks Islamic because it was built in Mudéjar style, with sumptuous baths, fountains and gardens. Ferdinand and Isabella made it the headquarters for their assault on the last remaining Moorish kingdom in Spain, the Emirate of Granada, which they took in 1492, at which time they also finally acceded to Columbus’ pleas to be allowed to discover America (which, of course, was not his actual intention). Unfortunately, they also made it the headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition, which they had established in 1480. The Moorish baths proved useful for waterboarding – 15th-century Europeans considered bathing to be unhealthful, anyway – so they were converted into torture chambers.

The Córdoba Alcázar is a square-shaped structure with a tower at each corner. The oldest is the Torre de los Leones, at the northwest corner, where the entrance to the palace is located, as well as the royal chapel. The octagonal tower at the northeast corner originally had a clock and was known as the Clock Tower, but is now called the Torre del Homenaje, or Tower of Homage. The Torre de la Paloma, Tower of the Dove, at the southeast corner, is a reconstruction of the square-shaped original, which was demolished in the 19th century; it had also been known as the Torre de la Vela, or Watchtower. The round Torre de la Inquisición, Tower of the Inquisition, has a sinister appearance that lives up to its name, which it owes to having housed the archives of the Inquisition for centuries. It was formerly also known as the Torre de los Jardines, the Tower of the Gardens.

Most of our stay in Córdoba was quite rightly devoted to visiting the Mezquita, but just as we reached its precincts we paused to linger in the Plaza de San Rafael. San Rafael is the guardian angel of Córdoba, and there is a tall monument in the Plaza with a statue of him by a French sculptor, Michel Verdiguier, who is also responsible for some of the Mezquita sculptures, on the top. Near it, at the north-west end of the Old Roman Bridge, stands the Puerta del Puente, or Bridge Gate. This replaced an old Roman gate of the city; the occasion for its construction was a visit to Córdoba by King Philip II in 1572, but it was not actually completed until much later. It was also rebuilt in 1928 and restored anew in the 21st century.