By Jordan Diamond
At the Mezquita-Cathedral of Córdoba, we were able to see how conquerors built on the earlier structures at this site. Underneath the Mosque, we saw remnants of a Roman-era Visigothic church. The original mosque component was expanded by later Islamic rulers, who hoped to make their own impact on the site. Once Christian Spain claimed Córdoba, rulers began work on a massive Cathedral to reshape the identity of the site to their cultural, political, and religious interests.
The remnants of the Visigothic church were clearly visible.
The experience left me thinking about how religious and cultural traditions build on the past. This idea is seen throughout the religious groups we have studied throughout our course: Just as the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is built on the ancient Jewish Temple Mound, Christianity builds off of the scripture of Judaism, and Islam builds off the scriptures of the earlier two religions. As we’ve explored in our class, too, Islamic poetry borrows from the themes and styles used in earlier pre-Islamic Arab poetry, and Jewish poetry from the Sephardic Golden Age borrows the themes introduced by Islamic poetry.
In this way, Andalusia served as a melting pot of cultural diffusion—a convivencia, as some would say. Few other places in medieval Europe experienced such rich multi-cultural works and thought exchanges that almost foreshadow the interconnected world we live in now. Even as we studied government policies of expulsions and inquisitions, seeing this exchange in person was inspiring and brought to life the themes of our class.
The Arabic writing in the Mosque section of the building shows its Islamic identity.
The stunning Cathedral, a later addition to the building, was part of an effort to claim it as a Christian site.
