The Caliphate of Córdoba was the high point of Muslim Spain. It lasted from 929 to 1031, but its roots lie in the emirate founded in 756 by Abd al-Rahman I, the Umayyad prince who escaped the massacre of his family in Damascus.
Abd al-Rahman III
When he came to the throne in 912, the emirate was weakened by internal revolts. Abd al-Rahman III put them down one after another, pushed back the Christian kingdoms of the north and stood up to the Fatimids of North Africa. In 929 he proclaimed himself caliph, successor of the Prophet and leader of all believers, claiming a title that until then belonged only to the Abbasids of Baghdad. His long reign, until 961, coincided with great prosperity: trade, irrigated agriculture and luxury crafts, from silk textiles to carved ivories, enriched Córdoba, which perhaps had 100,000 inhabitants or more, according to much-debated estimates.
Medina Azahara and the Mezquita
A few kilometres from Córdoba, Abd al-Rahman III began building Medina Azahara in 936, a palace city laid out on terraces at the foot of the Sierra Morena, with reception halls, gardens, a mosque and administrative quarters. It was destroyed and plundered a few decades later during the civil war; its ruins, rediscovered in the twentieth century, have been a UNESCO site since 2018. His son al-Hakam II enlarged the Mezquita with its magnificent mihrab decorated with Byzantine mosaics, made with the help of craftsmen sent from Constantinople (see Córdoba).
A capital of culture
Al-Hakam II was a great bibliophile: chronicles speak of a library of hundreds of thousands of volumes, a figure perhaps exaggerated but telling. Córdoba was home to physicians such as Abulcasis, whose surgical treatise was translated and used in Europe for centuries, as well as astronomers, mathematicians and poets, and the court received ambassadors from Byzantium, the German empire and the Christian kingdoms.
Almanzor and the end
When al-Hakam II died in 976, the caliph Hisham II was a child, and power passed to his minister Almanzor (al-Mansur, "the victorious"). Almanzor led dozens of campaigns against the Christians, sacking Barcelona in 985 and Santiago de Compostela in 997, from where he carried the bells back to Córdoba. After his death in 1002 his sons could not keep the balance between Arabs, Berbers and Slav mercenaries: in 1009 a civil war, the fitna, broke out and devastated Córdoba and Medina Azahara. In 1031 the caliphate was abolished and al-Andalus split into taifa kingdoms, opening a new phase of the Reconquista.