CORDOBA
Cordoba is about 100 miles from Granada, a short travel day through beautiful mountainous terrain and mile after mile of olive groves and grape orchards. The soil was in part either a rich reddish hue or a strange pale beige. Vegetation grew on either color. There are several roads out of Granada that lead to Cordoba. Next time I would take the longer one and stop off to visit the city of Jaen, but this time, we opted for the shorter route and so were in Cordoba by noon.
Long before our trip to Spain, I had one certain agenda item, namely to spend our one night in Cordoba at the Hotel Maimonides. I figured that it was the least I could do in honor of one of the greatest thinkers of all times – Jewish or non. So as we approached the city about 1:00 in the afternoon, I took out the map and noticed that the hotel was exactly across the street from the number one attraction in Cordoba – La Mezquita, the mosque. After winding our way through a few false turns on the outskirts of the city, we renewed acquaintances with an old friend whom we had first met in Seville several days earlier – we crossed the Guadalquivir River.
The way across the river and into the old city is via the Puente Romano – an old bridge whose two way traffic seems perpetually snarled. As we entered the bridge, the imposing La Calahorra tower built some 700 years ago stood vigil still against any possible raids from the south. After creeping our way along on the bridge for over ten minutes, we suddenly spilled out onto Avenida del Alcazar and there right before us was a purple sign indicating a major tourist attraction – Hotel Maimonides to the right.
I have no idea why I was so taken with the whole Maimonides thing. After all, the Rambam, as he was called, left Cordoba, even left Spain in 1147, when he was 13 years old. After a brief stay in Fez, Morocco, most of his adult life was spent in Fostat, Egypt – ancient Cairo. Yet, somehow, I saw the hotel as a symbol that a Jewish presence in this part of the world is clearly not forgotten.
After several minutes of negotiating one way streets, we arrived at our hotel, checked in, and aimed the car down a short, incredibly steep and narrow ramp into a dark underground parking garage. I figured the car would be very safe there because it was so dark that no one could find it. The hotel was large and ours were the only rooms that had not been recently refurbished. But they were spacious and adequate and had a one person balcony that overlooked a quaint back street. From the hallway outside the rooms, one could look into a lovely tiled atrium that was lined with trees and flowers and had a small fountain ... if I recall correctly. I got quite a charge out of seeing the hotel stationery and the hefty room key both with Maimonides' name on them. There was also a painting of the Rambam in the hotel lobby. Though by no means a recent artistic endeavor, I have no doubt whatsoever that Rambam did not sit for it.
Now most visitors to Cordoba would head immediately across the street to visit the famous mosque, but not us. The hotel was right on the border of the old Juderia. It was the Juderia that first beckoned. This Juderia was unlike any we had previously visited, for Cordoba had been a major hub of Jewish life and culture for centuries. Among it's Jewish residents were a veritable Who's-Who of thinkers, statesmen, and writers. We are not talking five or ten luminaries as in Toledo or Granada; we are talking about dozens upon dozens. I will mention just a few of them momentarily.
But first, so as better to understand the inter-relationship between Jews and Moors in Cordoba, a brief history is in order. The original Iberians, whoever they were (and I will posit my opinion at another time), came to this land hundreds maybe even thousands of years before the common era. There is very little record or evidence of culture before 1000 BCE. From then on, however, lots of people left traces. The Phoenicians, those sea faring adventurers who used Lebanon as their home base, occupied the area now known as Cadiz, making that the oldest continual settlement in the west. It is likely that a number of Jews came along with the Phoenicians to settle the peninsula. We read in the Bible about Jonah who, in running away from God's commands, boards a ship for Tarshish, which is understood to be Spain, and the Prophet Obadiah in 600 BCE refers to the "captivity of Jerusalem which is in Sepharad," which is the Hebrew word for Spain.
From a close reading of the first verses of Jonah, it might be assumed that there was a regular shipping schedule between Israel and Tarshish.
The next conquerors were the Carthaginians, who under General Hamilcar took the land in the 4th century BCE. Carthage in North Africa is also said to have been founded by the Phoenicians and was settled heavily by Jews from at least the 6th century BCE on. Not much later, the Carthaginian General Hannibal took his troops and elephants over the Alps from a place in Spain near Almeria to engage Rome in battle. The Greeks also had a presence in Spain in the 2nd century BCE – they used it as a trading depot.
The Roman legions at first used Spain as a vacation spot. Then, in 206 BCE, they took over the peninsula and made it an official colony. That is why some Spanish cities have Roman names – Saragossa, for instance, being a corruption of Caesar Augusta. Monuments and large building projects such as aqueducts were undertaken by Rome; many of these works still stand as evidence of Rome's building acumen. The second century Roman poet-philosopher Seneca, whose statue stands just at the entrance to the city, was a product of Cordoba.
But in the 5th century CE, Germanic Vandals invaded. In an effort to defeat the Vandals, the Romans invited the Christian Visigoths, another Germanic people, to help them. In 572 CE, led by King Leovigild, the Visigoths drove the Vandals over the sea to North Africa and took the country for themselves, ushering in a period of prosperity. Then, 150 years later, a civil war erupted over succession to the Visigoth throne. Seizing upon this moment of weakness, a coalition of Arabs from Yemen and Syria and North Africa under the leadership of Tariq ibn Ziyad landed on Gibraltar ... and within three years were the newest masters of Iberia. Incidentally, it is likely that Gibraltar gets its name from that man — Jebel ibn Tariq, the mountain of ibn Tariq. Over the next several centuries, thousands upon thousands of gypsies and Slavs and Jews and citizens of Turkey and Arabia were welcomed into the land. A veritable human stew. (With gratitude to Robin Totton. Andalusia. Wiltshire, England: The Crowood Press, 1991.)
When these Moslems took Iberia, barely two generations had passed since the death of Mohammed. Yet, the empire that he had created was already awash in factions and rivalries. The religious mission of Islam was to convert the pagans, but the personal and political agenda of many Islamic leaders was to carve out chunks of real estate for themselves. When Tariq invaded Iberia in 711, the Caliph – the supreme head or successor to Mohammed – was of the Umayyad clan residing in Damascus, Syria. The authority of the Caliph was absolute; he alone had the power to establish emirates subservient to him in all parts of the world. In 755, another family of Islam, the Abbasids who claim descent from Abbas, an uncle of Mohammed, seized power and murdered all of the Umayyads ... except one.
That scion of the Umayyad family escaped to Cordoba where he gained a position of leadership and power. His name was Abd al-Rahman. Over the next 250 years, there would be three leaders of the same name. Each would be greater than the last; each would increase the size, wealth, and power of the empire. By the time of Abd al-Rahman III, mid-10th century, there would be a huge and growing population in Cordoba, and he would proclaim himself Caliph of an independent Spain.
It was Abd al-Rahman I (756-785) who, as Emir of Cordoba, began construction of the mosque, choosing as its site an old Visigoth church. Unlike other absolute rulers throughout history, however, he actually paid the Christians for their property and gave them a new site upon which to rebuild. The original size of the mosque called for a building of 11 rows of columns set in 12 aisles. The columns are Corinthian in style (decorated on top), some of blue and some of pink marble, some with single and some with double or stacked Arabic arches to raise the ceiling so as to capture more light. The arches being of alternating red (or black) and white brick appear as if striped. The illusion upon first entering the mosque is of being in a forest of columns and arches with light entering from all sides.
Abd al-Rahman II (821-852), who ruled 50 years later, added eight more aisles with their columns and arches, and 100 years later, Al Hakam II (961-976), added yet another 12 aisles to take care of the needs of a quickly expanding population. Al Hakam also installed an intricately designed seating area called a maqsurah for the Caliph and his family as well as the piece-de-resistance – the most stunning feature of the mosque – a mihrab or prayer niche on the southeastern wall (qibla) in the direction of Mecca, although for some reason in this mosque the qibla wall is not in that direction.
While it is difficult for the regular tourist to get close enough to the mihrab to study the detailing on the inside of the niche, one is permitted easy access to the wall that envelops it and that is a marvel of beauty and workmanship. We are told that Constantine VII of Turkey sent 35 tons of glass mosaic pieces to Cordoba along with the craftsmen to carry out the mihrab design.
La Mezquita is truly a remarkable structure – remarkable for its size, for its design, for its craftsmanship, for its vision and concept. Therefore, it is understandable that one can be absolutely outraged at what the church did to this building. More about that before we leave Cordoba.
It is Abd al-Rahman III who interests me the most. He ruled just before Al Hakam II, from 926 to 961. Red haired and blue eyed – perhaps like his namesake grandfather or perhaps an indication of the genetic mix going on in Cordoba by this time, this self-declared Caliph had a little to do with the mosque. He expanded its courtyard and built its first minaret. Yet, despite these small additions, make no mistake, he may have been the greater builder of them all. It is Abd al-Rahman III who is credited with having developed the caliphal style of architecture with the palace he built just a few miles outside of Cordoba at a place called Medina al-Zahra, the city of brightness.
We spent about an hour strolling through the ruins of this massive undertaking – acres upon acres of buildings and gardens overlooking the plains and valleys as they roll out and down toward the Guadalquivir. In this monumental undertaking, his genius for building is well established. But his genius for dealing with people was greater still. This Caliph of Cordoba might easily have become exclusive – limiting power and influence to Moslems and to members of the royal family. But instead, an astute judge of talent, he invited the best and the brightest to serve with him. He aided Catholics and clerics, fostered philosophers and free thinkers, and surrounded himself with people of all persuasions. It was he who prepared the soil for Cordoba's intellectual giants ... the very thinkers whose works influenced, perhaps even precipitated, the Renaissance.
Among those intellectuals, was a Jew named Hasdai ibn Shaprut (915-970). A physician by profession and a statesman of note, he served in the courts of Al Hakam II and Abd al-Rahman III. A scholar in his own right, he translated the works of others from Hebrew or Latin into Arabic – the common language of Andalusia. His linguistic abilities and adroitness as a negotiator made him a very valuable asset to the Moorish court. He was used especially on delicate foreign missions. We might see his hand in the negotiations with the Sultan of Turkey for the mosaic tiles that went into the mihrab of the mosque, for instance. He was a benefactor of the Jewish community, supporting it financially, and he was its protector and spokesman at the court of the Caliph.
The most incredible aspect of his long career had to do with an otherwise unknown Jewish community. It seems that when two Slavic Jews came to Cordoba on a mission, they brought word of a kingdom in the backwater of Russia, in the Volga region, which in the 8th century, had joined their king Bulan in converting to Judaism – all 4000 souls.
Hasdai is said to have opened communications with this community and their last king – Joseph. According to fragments of letters that still survive, Hasdai believed these Khazars, as they were called, to be remnants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. There are, of course, scholars who debunk the authenticity of Hasdai's letters as well as the historicity of the Khazars. According to an oral tradition, they were ultimately defeated by the Tatars (or Tartars) and disappeared. Their fate is no clearer than their origin or their nature.
But, the prospect of an independent Jewish kingdom fed the fantasies of many Jews at the time who, at best, were second class citizens of the nations of the world. It was a story of Jewish power and renewal, containing in its essence perhaps a glimmer of Zionistic or messianic hope. One scholar, who lived exactly 100 years after Hasdai, took this fragment of history and turned it into a profound philosophical work. His name was Yehudah HaLevi. We will meet him in our next posting.