Cordoue

Cordoue ( Spanish Córdoba in ) is a city located in the south of the Spain, in Andalusia. Cordoue is the capital of the province same name.

The city is located on the Guadalquivir. It counts: 321000 inhabitants.
Son historical center is classified since 1984 world heritage of UNESCO.

History

Roman epoch

Cordoue is an old Iberian settlement and is occupied by Claudius Marcellus, a Romain, into 169 It was the capital of the province of Hispania Baetica. Various monuments dating from the Roman epoch are still visible in this city.

With the third or the fourth century, Cordoue becomes an episcopal see. The first bishop of Cordoue was probably Ossius which is present at the first council of Nicée in 325. He was to advise of the emperor Constantin.

Time wisigothe

During the collapse of the Roman Empire of Occident in Ve century, the city passes under the domination of the Vandales, then Visigoths until 711, except for a short Byzantine interlude, between 544 and 571.

Moslem Time

The Moslems conquer the city in 711. It then becomes the principal administrative and political center of Moslem Spain. Starting from 756, it is the capital of the emirate of Cordoue, rested by the prince omeyyade Abd Al-Rahman Ier, then starting from 929 of a independent caliphate, after the emir Abd Al-Rahman III broke any bond with the Abbassides of Baghdad and proclaimed itself Caliph. The reigns of Abd Al-Rahman III (912 - 961), of his/her son Al-Hakam II (961-976) and of the Hadjib (Vizier) Al-Mansur ibn Abi Amir (981 - 1002) constitute the most glorious period of the history of the city, even if the caliphs tended to neglect it with the profit of their new capital, Madinat Al-Zahra, founded in 936.

Throughout the 10th century, Cordoue competes with Baghdad by its size, its population and especially its magnificence. With its apogee towards the Year millet, Cordoue is one of the most populated cities Occident, the estimates varying between 250.000 and 500.000 inhabitants. The city would then have counted more than thousand Mosquée S and six hundred public baths.

The city especially extended towards the east: at the end of the 10th century, Cordoue was indeed in the center of a complex agglomeration. The town of Cordoue to the clean direction, the medina , that the Arabs called Kurtuba , was then surrounded by an enclosure, beyond which developed Faubourg S not strengthened, called djanib or rabad . The medina itself was the only strengthened part of the city. Of 785 with 987, the Moslems undertook there the construction of the Grande Mosque, which remains the principal monument of the city. The geographer Al-Idrisi, who writes two hundred years later, says that the medina was divided into five cities, each one to us closed by an enclosure. The palate califal, which formed a true city in the city, was one of these five cities. One found there also a district Jewish. To the east of the Large Mosque the district extended from the Souks.

To the east of the medina , extended a djanib called in Spanish ajarquía , word meaning “Eastern side”: this suburb was very developed, constituted of many districts, of which the district Mozarabe (the Christians and the Jews were rather numerous in Cordoue, but the city seems one of to be Islamized Andalusia at the time califale). To the west another suburb, less densément occupied extended, the “Western side”. In the south finally, on the other side of the river, had developed the Secunda Ar-Rabad , the “second suburb”.

The Artisanat was very present at Cordoue: one worked leather (Cordovan leather there is famous: the word “shoe-maker” derives besides from “Cordoue”), but also the textile. Another big industry of the city was the manufacture of paper and books: Cordoue is undoubtedly one of the most cultivated cities world at that time. A systematic effort was made by caliph Al-Hakam II to constitute a library at the time containing all the capital, old and recent works known. A network of dépisteurs, collectors, copyists, extended to the whole of the Islamic world, forwarded to Cordoue a fabulous collection of works, equal in importance to that of the caliphs Abbassides. One quotes the figure of: 400000 volumes. Of Cordoue even an army of scribes and bookbinders took care of the maintenance of these treasures.

In 858, going up the Guadalquivir, the chief Viking Hasting plunders Cordoue.

During the years 1009 to 1031, the caliphate crumbles and is divided into more than one ten small States, the Taifa S . Cordoue is nothing any more but the capital of one of these States, which fall into 1069 to the hands from the emir from Seville. Occupied then by the Almoravides in 1086, then by the Almohades in 1149, the city ceases being capital and begins its long decline.

Christian time

Cordoue remains under Moslem control until in 1236, date of the catch of the city by Ferdinand III of Castille. The city continues to decline, not being more from now on but one secondary agglomeration of the Andalusia Castilian, exceeded in particular by Seville. Its relative demographic revival dates only from the 20th century.

The Moslems remain there tolerated during the first decades of the domination Castilian, but the Grande Mosque is converted at once into church. In 1523, the construction of a Cathedral, called today the “Capilla mayor” (literally the “Large vault”), is undertaken in the middle of old the Mosquée. The many openings of the mosque on the city (which ensured a great luminosity inside the building) are then walled.

In 1808, during the Napoleonean wars , the city is put at bag by the French troops .

Inheritance

Religious heritage

Large Mosque, in Spanish Mezquita .
Synagog (14th century), one of the three remaining Spanish synagogs of the Middle Ages.
Churches fernandines and alphonsines (13th century)
Monasteries and convents (some unused)

Civil and military inheritance

Alcázar of the Christian Kings (14th century)
Palate of Viana with its flowered patios (16th century)
Residences and palate
Tour of Calahorra (14th century)
Porte of the Bridge (16th century)
Placed Vieja
Murailles and turns of times Moslem woman and Christian

Archaeological inheritance

Roman archaeological Vestiges (temple, mausoleum)
Moslem archaeological Vestiges (minarets preserved in the churches, Arab baths,…)
Archeological site of Madinat Al-Zahra (10th century)
Roman Bridge
Munyat Al-Rummaniya

Urban screen inherited the Middle Ages

Districts of Judería
District of Magdalena
District of San Lorenzo, with its church

Parks and gardens

Jardins of the Victoire
Jardins of the Duke of Rivetted
Jardins of Agricultura
Jardins del Conde of Vallellano
Jardins of Juan Carlos I
Parc Cruz Conde
Sotos of Albolafia
the balcony of Guadalquivir
perish-urban Parc of " Los Villares"
Park of Miraflores
Gardens of Alcazar

Famous characters

Three large Philosophe S were born with Cordoue, Sénèque the Roman Stoïcien, the Arab Averroes and the Juif Maïmonide, as well as the Latin poet Lucain and, later, the painter Bartolomé Bermejo.

Twinning

Cordoue has as a partner city:

(August 18th)

See too

Large Mosque of Cordoue
House of Cordoue
Julio Romero de Torres: painting beginning XXe.

Bonds

official of the town of Cordoue
Cordoue
Cordoue, European City of the Culture 2016 English, Spanish Gate

Sources of the article

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