Posted on 08/17/2005 4:51:39 PM PDT by SJackson
MEDINA AZAHARA, Spain - To hear historians tell it, this buried city three miles west of Córdoba was the Versailles of the Middle Ages, a collection of estates and palaces teeming with treasures that dazzled the most jaded traveler or world-weary aristocrat.
Pools of mercury could be shaken to spray beams of reflected sunlight across marble walls and ceilings of gold, according to contemporary records.
Doors carved of ivory and ebony led to sprawling gardens full of exotic animals and sculptures made of amber and pearls.
"Travelers from distant lands, men of all ranks and professions in life, following various religions, princes, ambassadors, merchants, pilgrims, theologians, and poets all agreed that they had never seen in the course of their travels anything that could be compared to it," wrote the 19th-century historian Stanley Lane-Poole in his book "The Story of the Moors in Spain."
Archaeologists are more hesitant, saying that while many of those marvels may have existed, physical evidence of them has yet to be found. But they, too, are full of superlatives.
"This was the largest city ever built from scratch in Western Europe," covering nearly 280 acres, Antonio Vallejo, the chief archaeologist here, said in an interview. "Most large Western cities grow over time. This was built in a single effort, from a single design."
Medina Azahara, also known as Madinat al-Zahra, was an Islamic metropolis built in the 10th century as a testament to Spain's proclamation in 929 that it was the true caliphate of the Muslim world.
The construction of the city, which began around 940, was a singular moment in history, when the most vibrant intellectual and cultural force in Europe was rooted in Islam, and when the heart of Islam was in many ways rooted in Europe.
But around 1010, Medina Azahara was sacked by Islamic purists from North Africa who considered the Muslim culture it represented far too liberal in its interpretation of the Koran. The raid effectively wiped the city off the map for a millennium.
Now, less than a hundred years after its ruins were identified and its location resurrected on modern maps, a new threat has emerged. Construction companies are putting up houses on the site of the city, 90 percent of which remains unexcavated.
Mr. Vallejo said he had faced many obstacles in the 20 years he has studied and worked to preserve the site - from inadequate funding to erosion. "But the biggest problem we have had is the building of these illegal homes," he said.
The local government in Córdoba, he said, has failed to enforce a law passed 10 years ago that expanded protections for the site against development.
A spokesman for the government, who observed Spanish protocol by requesting anonymity to avoid upstaging his superiors, said that the construction had practically stopped, and that in any event most of the houses were on the fringes of the site.
But Mr. Vallejo said that some 250 houses were on protected territory and that the government had not taken a firm stand against future construction.
The historical value of the site is difficult to overstate, he and other scholars say.
Medina Azahara represented a society that, despite its location on a predominantly Christian continent, became in many ways the embodiment of the Islamic world at its peak, when Muslim achievements in fields like science, philosophy and mathematics towered above virtually all others.
That society was called Al Andalus, the Arabic name for the Iberian Peninsula when it was under Muslim control, a period that lasted nearly 800 years, ending in 1492 with the surrender of the last Muslim stronghold in Granada.
María Rosa Menocal, a professor of Spanish at Yale and author of "Ornament of the World," a book about Muslim Spain, said that Al Andalus and its capital, Córdoba, were probably justified in considering themselves the center of the known universe when Medina Azahara was built. "There was no comparison between Córdoba and anything else in Europe in the 10th century - like New York versus well, a rural village in Mexico," she said in an e-mail interview.
Córdoba had running water, paved and lighted streets, and, when large collections of books were scarce in Europe, some 70 libraries, the biggest containing 400,000 volumes, according to some accounts.
Al Andalus introduced Western Europe to paper, algebra, advanced irrigation techniques and Latin translations of many of the classic works of Greek philosophy.
The confluence of Islamic and European heritages is a crucial but often overlooked chapter in world history, scholars contend, and perhaps its greatest exponent is the ruined city that Mr. Vallejo is fighting to preserve.
Medina Azahara "never symbolized anything in European history because virtually no one who was not a part of the Islamic Spain orbit knows/knew anything about it," Ms. Menocal wrote.
Abd al-Rahman III, who founded the city, envisioned it as a showcase of the virtues of Al Andalus and as affirmation of his claim that he was the true caliph of the Muslim world. As the ruler of what was then one of the world's wealthiest civilizations, Rahman not only stocked the city's main palace with luxuries, but also turned it into a bustling emporium of musicians, astronomers, poets, doctors, botanists and mathematicians, historians say.
Its destruction signaled the beginning of the end of the only Muslim culture ever to flourish in Western Europe, and led to the decimation of a unique branch of Islam that had taken root a continent away from the influences of the Islamic centers of the Middle East.
Mr. Vallejo said that fully excavating the city, a job begun shortly after the ruins were identified in 1911, would take at least an additional hundred years. "This is a job for generations," he said.
As he looked out over the rows of horseshoe arches, marble pillars and replanted orange trees on the grounds of the partly excavated palace, he pointed to a group of encroaching houses to the west.
"They are right on top of us," he said. "We will never be able to truly understand this city if something isn't done about those homes."
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Last Gaza Settlers Forcibly Removed [kicking and screaming]
They are right on top of us, We will never be able to truly understand this city if something isn't done about those homes.
Which homes? I'm getting confused. The West seem to be causing these folk problems everywhere.
How come OSHA didn't stop them from playing with Hg like this?
How come OSHA didn't clamp down on them playing around with Hg like this?
Don't worry. Large parts of Granada are being taken over by an emirate-funded group of Spanish Islamic converts, who have driven all the non-Muslims out of certain neighborhoods. The Muzzies will be in charge there again before too long, and it can revert to the 7th century.
Interestingly enough, the article does mention the fact that the Muslims who initially lived there - who came from the very earliest time of Islam, before it had had time to wreak havoc, and were still influenced by their native cultures and by the high culture of that part of Spain, which had been the Roman colony that had contributed scores of people ranging from authors to emperors to Rome - were considered heretics and overrun by more radical Muslims from North Africa. So much for "moderate Islam."
They wreaked a bit of havoc in northern Africa on the way to Spain as I recall. I've forgotten the name of the specific Cathedral (in Grenada?), but I believe demands were made to institute Islamic services within two days of the Madrid bombing, as it was originally a Mosque after all.
Wow! 400,000 Korans. I'd hate to be the librarian who mishandled one of those puppies.
The Visigoths, et al, really were not terribly advanced at the time, and the peninsula had suffered seriously in the Plague of Justinian a couple of centuries prior (when the Dark Ages fell on all of Western and Northern Europe, Northern and Eastern Asia, and many spots in between.
This Jewish community continued to provide most of the industrial might found in the world for the next 800 years whereupon the Spanish Christians gave them the choice of emigrate or convert.
Many chose to do both and hit out for the Americas just then discovered.
Levittown
"But around 1010, Medina Azahara was sacked by Islamic purists from North Africa who considered the Muslim culture it represented far too liberal in its interpretation of the Koran. The raid effectively wiped the city off the map for a millennium."
While in the Cordoba region, I considered going to see Medina Azahara but the degree to which it had been destroyed made it not worth the time.
By comparision, the Alhambra captured by the Christians at the end of the Reconquista in 1492 is still there for the World to admire.
Hell, I'm for it. Any place that represented Islam should be buried and built upon by Christians and/or Jews.
Yes, I truly feel that way.
The Spanish need to take dynamite and blow up every square inch of Muslim remnants in this area. Before it is too late.
Very interesting historical find. Yet it seems to me that Islamic Spain, which I'm sure was for the most part a pretty good place for a Muslim society, is overly romanticized, especially by multiculturalists. Thanks for the ping.
After the Muslims sacked Spain, murdering tens of thousands, converting or enslaving the rest--they demanded a tribute of 100 Christian virgins per year for their harems. Many of these girls were as young as 8 years old. Many of them did not survive their first year. These Muslims were animals.
But I'm sure they only did it because of Bush and Israel, otherwise they would have left all the little Spanish girls alone.
So is this all just an Islamic fantasy? Next we'll hear they even had a Muslim-Christian Cooperation Society that met every Wednesday night! Bah!
7th century -- well, 8th century to be exact -- would be fine. The first Muslim rulers of Spain generally practiced religious tolerance and ruled over a Golden age in Spain. It wasn't until the Almohad Dynasty took over in the 11th or 12th century that things fell apart.
Not that the Christians who pushed out the Muslims did much better.
Seems we have some Islamic influence here Andulasia, Alabama
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