Abd al-Rahman III: Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba (Spain)
Enlargement of Abd al-Rahman III
Though he was concentred on Medina Azahara construction, the first Umayyad
Caliph, Abd al-Rahman III (912-961) didn’t forget the Mosque. He performed two works: the renewing of the external walls of the court and the building of a new tower, Alminar.
The ancient Alminar of Hisham I was pulled down in 951 and the new one was inaugurated in 952 although the are authors who said that it was built in 946.
The alminar whose body / main structure is conserved in the nowadays tower; this was built in stones, it was like a Prisma with squared plan of 8,5m each side and a height of 47m. The tower was prolonged with a yamur. The yamur is a typical islamic decoration. It consists in three gold decresing concentric balls, ending the top of the tower. Normally it was ended with; an
azucena, flor de lis a little gold grenade. The tower consisted into two parts, the first longer than the second one and ended with a terrace with merlon, and the last narrower and covered with half circular vault. In the first part there were two storeys for windows with horseshoe archs on the columns double the frontal ones and triple those of the sides; in the upper part there was a wainscot with little archs on every side.
The top of the tower was for the Muezzin or Almuedano, who called the believers to the pray, and it had a horseshoe arch door in every side.
The indoors space was divided into two halves separated
with a wall from down till the upper side dividing the body of the tower into two, independent from the staircase, with an entrance through the court and the others through the street.
This double slope is typical in the cordovan tower, and considered a quality sign, besides a sign of superiority of the cordovan Umayyad Caliph upon the abbasí Bagdad Caliphate.
However, archaeologist Don Félix Hernández attributes the shape of the Minaret to Abd al-Rahman III and his architect. He had to finish the tower in 13 months a much wider than the one of Hisham I, trying the solve its internal part as he could.
The restoration of the outside wall ended in 958 and the direction of the work was in charge of the ex-slave Abd Allah Ibn Badr; this information
was found in the Blessing Arch, the door connected to main nave.
The work was provoked because of the lost of verticality of the wall of the court, pulled by the internal arcades.
A thick wall was added that acted as buttress; this was perforated by the eleven horseshoe archs. Similar to the others existing in this zone these archs were on marble columns with fleshy leaves characteristic in the caliph period
. This is an imitation of the classical world; they can be corynth or mixed.
The wall was covered with stucco; it was decorated with geometrical drawings and different colours: white and red, of these drawings, a few are conserved. The fasade was a wainscot ended in roofs with rolled medals, decorated with a board of vegetable or geometrical drawings, sculptured into gypsum. All the complex has changes, ever the archs the lattices that close the patio are made by Rafael de la Hoz Arderius (1924-2000) in 1972; and the glass by the arch of the gallery was colorated in 2001.
Text: Jesús Pijuán.
Traslated by Sara Moretti