A few kilometers outside of town lie the ruins of the tenth century Madinat al-Zahra palace city, supposedly staffed by 400 eunuchs, and containing a harem of 6000 women. There are stories of Cordoba at this time speaking of a city of lit streets, fed by a comprehensive water network, with up to 900 bath houses,700 mosques, one of the earliest universities, and a library containing hundreds of thousands of books. It saw a booming economy fueled by agriculture and manufacturing, an expansion and decoration of cities, and a cultural flowering with the development of art, music, academia, fashion, and literature. But in the tenth century the Caliphate of Cordoba was declared, and this period is seen as the golden period of Islamic rule. There were plenty of internal power struggles and conflicts, as they lost territory to the new northern Christian Kingdoms. Al-Andalus originally became a part of the Umayyad Caliphate based in Damascus, until an independent Al-Andalus was declared in 756. They promptly swept north to Cordoba, and the capital Toledo, taking almost the whole of the peninsula within ten years. Whatever the motivation, in the year 711, an army of no more than a few thousand men landed, and swiftly defeated an army led by the aforementioned Roderic. He found the walls painted with Arab horsemen, and a parchment declaring: “Whenever this chamber is violated…the people painted on these walls will invade Spain, overthrow its kings, and subdue the land.” Twenty-six kings came and went, and twenty-six locks were secured, until Roderic wrenched the door asunder to get at the secret inside. Her father, a powerful count in charge of an outpost in North Africa, resolved upon revenge and convinced the local Moorish chief to invade the peninsula.Īn alternative tale tells of an ancient king depositing a secret in a tower, and instructing that each of his successors should add a lock to the door securing the entrance. A popular story about the motivation for their initial invasion tells how the Visigoth King Roderic lusted after a young maiden he saw bathing in the river, and was driven by desire to ravish her. Much like the story of the divinely assisted Christian reconquest, The story of the Moors in Spain is one that seems difficult to tell without recourse to embellished legend. But as the name implies, Andalucía is the offspring of Moorish Al-Andalus, and it is the remaining Moorish architecture in Sevilla, Cordoba, and particularly Granada that really catches the eye. Sevilla and Cadiz also bear the trappings of the trade with the New World after the discovery of the Americas and the establishment of the Empire. The Romans were very comfortable here, as can be seen at a number of archeological sites, most notably Italica just outside Sevilla. There are countless monuments that witness the region’s glorious and varied past. The modern phenomenon that had such an effect on the country, package tourism, is also well catered for in the resorts along the miles and miles of coastline. The rituals of the bull fight are said to originate from a village in the mountains that rise from the South Coast, and Andalucía is the spiritual home of Flamenco.
Yet it is also home to so many of the characteristics that have loudly been heralded as the face of Spain. Linguistically too, its inhabitants are famously difficult to understand, so truncated is their pronunciation. It has a unique personality, product of a history of diverse influences, and a climate and geography that also sets it apart.
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