Why go
This period explains the scale and ambition behind Córdoba's best-known monument. The great mosque represents the city at its political and cultural height; Medina Azahara adds the story of a caliphal palace city and the upheaval that followed in the next century.
The full story
Muslim forces captured Córdoba in 711. The city became a provincial capital and was later chosen as the capital of an independent emirate of al-Andalus. The Umayyad caliphate that followed made Córdoba a major political and cultural centre. Construction of the great mosque began under Abd al-Rahman I, and later rulers expanded it. Its long development matters on site: the building is the product of more than one generation, rather than a single moment of caliphal splendour. The palace city of Medina Azahara shows another side of the same political world, built to express courtly power beyond the central mosque. The caliphate's strength did not last. Rival factions fought after the turn of the eleventh century, and Medina Azahara was pillaged and damaged. The caliphate ended in 1031, leaving Córdoba to a different political future. The contrast between the surviving mosque and the ruined palace city makes that change especially clear.