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Its building began at the end of the Government of Abd al-Rahman I, in the summer (786), and it was designed as the symbol of the Umayyad Indepent Emirate from Damascus in the occident, and to leave the building as heritage of this dynasty.
The starting points of the Mosque were the rest of the Cathedral / Basilica of Saint Vincent, and they were bought by the emir to the mozarabic for 100.000 dinars. The space, in which it was built, had almost squared dimensions and bordered laterally with two streets in north-south direction, streets that can be identified with two streets situated on left and right of the cardo maximus of the Colonia Patricia; the cardo maximus (the main roman street) is situated under the main nave of the Mosque.
In the Andalusian Mosques it is characteristic the desviation towards South-Southeast, but this is even more in the Córdoba Alhama, this is oriented 169º in spite of the 111º dictated by the Coran.
Besides our Mosque rassemble to the Kaaba in its disposition and the proportion of the plant, a square a little prolonged, whose dimension were set un by Don Félix Hernández.
The space is divided into two halves, one covered and another not, the court. Its shape is a square of 79m of one side, in it 42,21m are of the Mosque and the rest is the court, whose southern side is 1,30m longer than the Northern.
Oleg Grabar said that the architects of the Mosque didn’t worry about the exactness of the measures and the regularity of proportions, asymmetry that is found in the basement of the walls that closed the primitive court from the North, that aren’t parallel to the qibla and in the wall of the North and the south. The perimetral walls of the building, which are conserved only the occidental sector, are build with lime stones, with stones put in “strongline and coal piece”, and it is reinforced by counterforts, like little towers and finished with a traditional oriental decoration: the merlons.
The most important and original characteristic of the Primitive Mosque are eleven naves, that are separated into archs on columns. The space is divided into twelve columns where one hundred twenty columns lay.
The arcades of the naves are directed towards the qibla; this organitation of the space is quite different from the Umayyad Damascus Mosque where the naves are parallel to this wall.
The columns are with bases, capitals, simas and its materials are from the roman, byzantine and visigothic period; as its length is different the columns are prolonged with plinths. The alternance of the materials in the vaussoirs of the archs.
The alternance of the materials in the vaussoirs (the different parts / sections of an arch) stones and bricks and the superposition of the archs has a roman origin the beneath archs are, whose origin is visigothic, have a functional task, to contrarrest the lateral pressure andensure the verticality of the columns. The upper archs are roman and sustain the longitudinal wall of the separation of the naves.
On the main walls that enclose the naves it is situated a structure (twenty).
It is also important to name Bab al–Wazara or the Door of the Viziers (after called Saint Stephen Door); this is the first example of hispano-muslim architecture, with its original shape, that will be repeated in all the doors of the Mosque.
The main entrance is divided into three axes, the central one is the widest and storeys. In the main part you can appreciate three little horseshoe archs separated with boards of atauriques (atauriques, sculptured stone with floral decoration) surrounded by alfiz (a typical frame) and ended with a dosel (canopy) this last one ended with almenas.
The first part has three shouldered doors, one can be used, the central one. In the middle of the second storey there is alfiz that includes a horseshoe arch with stone vaussoirs decorated with vegetable decoration; on both sides can be seen decorated boards with sculptured stone.
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