Reading Check Identify Supporting Details What Are the Some Features That Identify Islamic Art?
Great Mosque of Córdoba from the air, Córdoba, Spain, begun 786 and enlarged during the 9th and 10th centuries, (photograph: Toni Castillo Quero, CC Past-SA ii.0)
Known locally equally Mezquita-Catedral, the Great Mosque of Córdoba is one of the oldest structures still standing from the fourth dimension Muslims ruled Al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia including most of Kingdom of spain, Portugal, and a small-scale section of Southern France) in the belatedly 8th century. Córdoba is a two hour train ride south of Madrid, and draws visitors from all over the world.
Temple/church/mosque/church building
The buildings on this site are every bit complex as the extraordinarily rich history they illustrate. Historians believe that there had first been a temple to the Roman god, Janus, on this site. The temple was converted into a church by invading Visigoths who seized Córdoba in 572. Next, the church building was converted into a mosque and then completely rebuilt by the descendants of the exiled Umayyads—the first Islamic dynasty who had originally ruled from their capital Damascus (in present-24-hour interval Syria) from 661 until 750.
A new majuscule
Following the overthrow of his family (the Umayyads) in Damascus by the incoming Abbasids, Prince Abd al-Rahman I escaped to southern Kingdom of spain. Once there, he established control over almost all of the Iberian Peninsula and attempted to recreate the grandeur of Damascus in his new capital, Córdoba. He sponsored elaborate building programs, promoted agriculture, and fifty-fifty imported fruit trees and other plants from his former abode. Orange trees all the same stand up in the courtyard of the Mosque of Córdoba, a beautiful, if bittersweet reminder of the Umayyad exile.
Hypostyle hall, Nifty Mosque at Córdoba, Spain, begun 786 and enlarged during the 9th and 10th centuries (photo: wsifrancis, CC By-NC-ND 2.0)
The hypostyle hall
The building itself was expanded over two hundred years. Information technology is comprised of a large hypostyle prayer hall (hypostyle means, filled with columns), a courtyard with a fountain in the middle, an orange grove, a covered walkway circumvoluted the courtyard, and a minaret (a tower used to phone call the faithful to prayer) that is now encased in a squared, tapered bong tower. The expansive prayer hall seems magnified past its repeated geometry. It is built with recycled aboriginal Roman columns from which sprout a striking combination of two-tiered, symmetrical arches, formed of stone and blood-red brick.
Mihrab, Neat Mosque at Córdoba, Spain (photo: wsifrancis, CC Past-NC-ND 2.0)
The mihrab
The focal bespeak in the prayer hall is the famous horseshoe biconvex mihrab or prayer niche. A mihrab is used in a mosque to identify the wall that faces Mecca—the nativity place of Islam in what is now Kingdom of saudi arabia. This is practical equally Muslims face up toward Mecca during their daily prayers. The mihrab in the Bang-up Mosque of Córdoba is framed past an exquisitely decorated arch behind which is an unusually large space, the size of a small room. Golden tesserae (small pieces of glass with aureate and colour backing) create a dazzling combination of night blues, cerise browns, yellows and golds that grade intricate calligraphic bands and vegetal motifs that adorn the arch.
The horseshoe curvation
The horseshoe-mode curvation was mutual in the architecture of the Visigoths, the people that ruled this area subsequently the Roman empire collapsed and before the Umayyads arrived. The horseshoe arch eventually spread across North Africa from Morocco to Egypt and is an hands identified characteristic of Western Islamic compages (though there are some early examples in the East as well).
Mihrab dome, Great Mosque at Córdoba, Spain (photograph: José Luiz, CC BY-SA 3.0)
The dome
Higher up the mihrab, is an as dazzling dome. It is congenital of crisscrossing ribs that create pointed arches all lavishly covered with gold mosaic in a radial design. This amazing building technique anticipates later on Gothic rib vaulting, though on a more pocket-sized scale.
The Great Mosque of Córdoba is a prime number instance of the Muslim earth'south ability to brilliantly develop architectural styles based on pre-existing regional traditions. Here is an extraordinary combination of the familiar and the innovative, a formal stylistic vocabulary that can exist recognized as "Islamic" fifty-fifty today.
Additional resources:
Al-Andalus: the art of Islamic Spain, ed. Jerrilynn D. Dodds (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art) 1992
Source: https://smarthistory.org/the-great-mosque-of-cordoba/
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