Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus is the name given to the territory of the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim rule, a presence that extended from 711 to 1492. Its heartland lay in southern Spain, and the modern name Andalusia descends from the term al-Andalus used by the Arabs. The Islamic chapter of Spanish history opened in 711, when Umayyad armies crossed from North Africa into Visigothic Spain and soon conquered most of the peninsula as al-Andalus.

Musa ibn Nusayr, the governor of Ifriqiya, reinforced Tariq with more troops and together they had conquered most of al-Andalus by 714 CE. The peninsula was thus brought under Islamic control within seven years.

The Umayyad dynasty in the east collapsed when the Abbasids overthrew it in 750, seizing the caliphate for themselves. A young prince, Abd al-Rahman, escaped the slaughter of almost his entire family and fled toward the Euphrates, abandoning relatives including an infant son before pressing further afield. He landed at Almuñécar in 755 CE, rallied Syrians loyal to the Umayyad name, took Málaga and Seville, and marched on Cordoba in 756 CE. The emirate he founded there in 756 made Cordoba its capital.

Abd al-Rahman III proclaimed himself caliph in 929, a direct challenge to the Abbasids in Baghdad and the Fatimids in North Africa. Under his rule Cordoba grew into the largest and most cultured city of Europe, the seat of Europe's first academy of medicine and a centre for geographers, architects, craftsmen, artists and scholars of every kind. He built Madinat al-Zahra.

Cordoba, the Umayyad capital, was said to hold half a million inhabitants in 113,000 houses, with 700 mosques, 300 public baths and more than seventy libraries. Under Umayyad rule the city was enlarged and filled with palaces and mosques, and its woven silks, elaborate brocades, leatherwork and jewelry were prized throughout Europe and the East. The caliphs commissioned luxury objects such as carved ivory boxes and figured silks.

The caliphate came to an end in 1031, when the leading families of Cordoba abolished it. Medina Azahara, built in the mid-10th century by the Umayyad dynasty as the seat of the Caliphate of Cordoba, was laid to waste in the civil war of 1009-1010 that ended the Caliphate.

The Great Mosque of Cordoba stands as the most emblematic monument of Islamic religious architecture. Its core is defined by red-striped horseshoe arches, the distinctive contribution of Abd al-Rahman I's own building campaign. Later extensions followed under Abd al-Rahman II, al-Hakam II and the vizier al-Mansur, with the structure completed about 976. The forest of stone of its columned prayer hall finds an echo in the orange trees of its courtyard. Its double arches had forerunners in the Los Milagros Aqueduct, and its ribbed vault with intertwined arches preceded the ribbed vault in France.

Madinat al-Zahra was an opulent palace city begun in 936 about 5 miles west of Cordoba, housing the royal family, administrators and soldiers. It set the standard for artistic taste throughout the caliphate. After the unrest that consumed the caliphate, the site was abandoned, and its ruins remained undiscovered until the early 20th century. It was later designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.

When the Umayyad caliphate of Cordoba lost central authority, petty kings known as the taifas appeared across al-Andalus, forming at least 23 states between 1009 and 1091 under Berber, Andalusian Arab and Slav factions such as the Aftasids of Badajoz and the Abbadids of Sevilla. These rulers pretended to be hajibs of a caliphate that no longer existed, and in the absence of political legitimacy or Umayyad bloodline they turned to patronage of the arts and sciences to attract poets and scholars.

Almoravid intervention followed Alfonso VI's capture of Toledo in 1085, when Yusuf ibn Tashufin won at Zallaqah near Badajoz in 1086 and the party kingdoms were dissolved. The Almoravids were a Berber power from North Africa that had conquered Morocco and founded Marrakesh, and they assumed control over al-Andalus in 1090 with Marrakesh as seat of government. Their rule left the minbar commissioned in 1137 by Ali ibn Yusuf for the Kutubiyya Mosque, along with the mosques of Algiers, Tlemcen and Fez.

The Almohads replaced the Almoravids in the mid-twelfth century, established their capital at Seville, and were defeated at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, from which their power in Spain never recovered.

The Nasrid dynasty was founded by Muhammad I ibn Nasr of Arjona, who ruled Granada and the neighboring cities of Jaén, Almería and Málaga from 1232 until 1492. Muhammad I settled in the old Alcazaba of the Albayzin and rebuilt the ruined hill site of the Alhambra as his court.

The Alhambra, the only preserved palatine city of the Islamic period, is a fortified city on a hill overlooking Granada, its name meaning 'the red', probably from the reddish rammed earth of its outer walls. It was built chiefly between 1238 and 1358 under Ibn al-Ahmar, founder of the Nasrid dynasty, and his successors Isma'il I, Yusuf I and Muhammad V; its splendid interior decorations are ascribed to Yusuf I, and it reached its greatest splendour in the second half of the fourteenth century. The palaces are famous for carved stucco, glazed tile dadoes, muqarnas vaults and poetic inscriptions, and their architectural and decorative programmes have survived largely intact since the fourteenth century.

The Generalife was built during the reign of Muhammad III as a Nasrid summer retreat. Separated from the Alhambra by a gorge, it is laid out as terraces on a hillside with pavilions overlooking gardens and the palatine city. The Acequía Court on the lowest terrace is divided into four quadrants by water channels, and a water-channel stairway links the highest terrace to the lower levels.

The Albayzin, origin of the city and a legacy of Moorish town planning, is separated from the Alhambra by the river Darro and forms the oldest section of Granada. The Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo and the fourteenth-century Alcázar were built as a palace for Moorish queens. Nasrid arts grew from Almohad traditions with greater variety and splendour, and Spanish lusterware of Málaga and later Manises gave rise to Italian maiolica.

Muslim forces from North Africa had taken most of the Iberian peninsula from the Visigoths in the early eighth century, but by the eleventh century the Christian kingdoms of the north were strong enough to begin retaking territory. The long campaign reached its conclusion when Granada surrendered on January 2 1492 to Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, ending 275 years of Nasrid independence and the near-800-year saga of al-Andalus. The last Nasrid ruler, Muhammad XII, called Boabdil by Spanish historians, was exiled to the Maghrib.

Three Andalusian properties appear on the World Heritage List, each reflecting a distinct phase of the region's architectural and urban history. The earliest inscriptions date from 1984, when both the Historic Centre of Cordoba and the Alhambra, Generalife and Albayzin were added, and both entries were subsequently revised through boundary modifications in 1994.^{12Historic Centre of Cordoba · UNESCO World Heritage Centre ↗13Alhambra, Generalife and Albayzin, Granada · UNESCO World Heritage Centre ↗} The most recent addition, the Caliphate City of Medina Azahara, was inscribed in 2018.^{9Caliphate City of Medina Azahara · UNESCO World Heritage Centre ↗}