A Quick History of Al‑Andalus
A companion to The Last Stand
Seven centuries in ten minutes: the background to The Last Stand, from the crossing at Gibraltar in 711 to the surrender of Granada in 1492, and a short guide to recognizing the buildings al-Andalus left behind.
711 — The Crossing. In the summer of 711, a Berber commander named Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed from North Africa with a few thousand men and defeated Roderic, the Visigothic king. Toledo, the Visigothic capital, fell that same year, and within a few years most of the peninsula was under Muslim rule. The rock where Tariq landed still carries his name: Jabal Tariq, Gibraltar.
756 — A Prince in Exile. In 750 the Umayyad dynasty that ruled the Islamic world from Damascus was overthrown and nearly wiped out. One prince, Abd al-Rahman I, escaped, crossed North Africa, and arrived in al-Andalus, where in 756 he made himself emir in Córdoba. In 785 he began the Great Mosque.
929 — The Caliphate. In 929 his descendant Abd al-Rahman III declared himself caliph, a claim to lead the entire Muslim world. For the next century Córdoba was one of the great capitals of the medieval world. Ambassadors came from the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople and from Otto I of Germany. In 949 the Byzantines sent a Greek manuscript of Dioscorides, the ancient handbook of medicinal plants, along with a Greek monk to help the caliph's Jewish physician, Hasdai ibn Shaprut, translate it into Arabic. The caliph's son, al-Hakam II, built a library that chroniclers said held hundreds of thousands of books. The numbers are probably exaggerated, but even a fraction of them would have dwarfed any library in Christian Europe.
What al-Andalus knew.
Water and farming. Al-Andalus inherited Roman aqueducts and bridges, restored them, and added waterwheels and irrigation channels drawn from techniques across the Islamic world. Its farmers introduced or spread rice, sugar cane, cotton, citrus, spinach, and eggplant, and agronomists like Ibn Bassal of Toledo and Ibn al-Awwam of Seville wrote detailed manuals on soil, grafting, and irrigation.
Medicine. Al-Zahrawi, physician to the Córdoba court, finished a thirty-volume medical encyclopedia around 1000. Its volume on surgery, translated into Latin in Toledo, became a standard text in European medical schools for centuries.
Reading. The first word of the Qur'an revealed to Muhammad is iqra, "read" or "recite." In schools attached to mosques, ordinary children across the Islamic world learned to read and write. Al-Andalus also made paper, far cheaper than parchment. The earliest recorded paper mill in Europe was at Xàtiva, near Valencia, by the mid-1000s.
Philosophy and science. Scholars in al-Andalus studied the Greek philosophy and science that had been translated into Arabic in Baghdad, and added to it. Ibn Rushd of Córdoba, known in Europe as Averroes, wrote commentaries on Aristotle so influential that medieval European scholars called him simply "the Commentator." Maimonides, born in Córdoba in 1138, became the most important Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages.
1031 to 1248 — Rival Kingdoms, and the Road North. The caliphate collapsed in civil war after 1009 and broke into rival kingdoms, called taifas. Their culture flourished even as they fought. In 1085 Toledo fell to Alfonso VI of Castile. Instead of ending its learning, the conquest opened it to Europe: for the next two centuries, scholars came to Toledo to translate its Arabic books into Latin. Gerard of Cremona alone translated 87 works, including Ptolemy's Almagest, the foundation of European astronomy until Copernicus.
Two North African dynasties, the Almoravids and then the Almohads, crossed into Spain to hold back the Christian kingdoms. The Almohads made Seville their capital and built the Giralda. But Córdoba fell in 1236 and Seville in 1248.
1238 to 1492 — The Last Stand. One kingdom remained. Muhammad I ibn al-Ahmar founded the Nasrid dynasty in Granada in 1238 and began the Alhambra. For two and a half centuries his successors survived by paying tribute to Castile and playing their enemies against each other, and built the Comares Palace, the Court of the Lions, and a madrasa, founded in 1349. On January 2, 1492, the last Nasrid ruler, Muhammad XII, known as Boabdil, surrendered Granada to Ferdinand and Isabella.
After 1492 — Forgetting. The treaty of surrender promised Granada's Muslims the freedom to keep their faith. Within a decade it was broken. In 1499 the Archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, had the madrasa's library burned in the Plaza Bib-Rambla. Muslims were forced to convert or leave, Arabic was later banned, and in the early 1600s the descendants of Spain's Muslims were expelled. For generations, the seven centuries of al-Andalus were taught as an occupation, and 1492 as a liberation.
How to Read the Buildings
A round arch stops at a half circle. A horseshoe arch keeps going, curving back in at the bottom so the opening is narrower than the arch itself. The Visigoths used it first; the builders of al-Andalus made it their signature. See it: everywhere, starting at Cristo de la Luz in Toledo.
In the Great Mosque of Córdoba the arch stones alternate between red brick and cream stone, and the arches are stacked two high to lift the roof. See it: the prayer hall of the Mezquita.
Arches whose edges are cut into a row of small curves, like a scalloped shell, sometimes crossing over one another in interlaced patterns. They mark the most important spaces. See it: the caliph al-Hakam II's extension of the Mezquita, in front of the mihrab.
A rectangular border, called an alfiz, often surrounds an arch, filled with carving or tile. See it: doorways across all four cities.
A net of interlocking diamond shapes, called sebka, carved in brick across a wall. See it: on the upper faces of the Giralda in Seville.
Hundreds of small carved cells stacked into domes and arches so that they look like stalactites or a honeycomb. The name is muqarnas. See it: the Hall of the Two Sisters and the Hall of the Abencerrajes in the Alhambra.
Walls are covered in geometric tile below and carved plaster above, with bands of Arabic calligraphy running through them: verses of poetry, praise for the ruler, and the Nasrid motto, "There is no victor but God." Religious buildings avoid pictures of people and animals, and even the palaces use them sparingly, so the decoration is mostly geometry, plants, and words. The twelve stone lions of the Court of the Lions are the famous exception. See it: the Alhambra, the Alcázar of Seville.
Courtyards are built around water: long reflecting pools, fountains, and narrow channels running across the floor and into the rooms. See it: the Court of the Myrtles in the Alhambra, the Generalife gardens.
What Remains
The buildings are the evidence.
The Mosque of Córdoba, with a cathedral built into its center. The Giralda, with a Renaissance bell tower on top. The mosques and synagogues of Toledo, the waterwheel on the Guadalquivir, and the Alhambra. They are the evidence the history books left out, and they are what The Last Stand is built to see.
When a building has all of these features but was built for a Christian king or a Jewish congregation after the conquest, it is Mudéjar, the work of Muslim craftsmen, or craftsmen trained in their tradition, living under Christian rule. See it: the Synagogue of Santa María la Blanca in Toledo, Pedro I's palace in the Alcázar of Seville.
Ready to see it for yourself?
The Last Stand follows this history through Toledo, Córdoba, Seville, and Granada.