February 2009 – Page 2 – Paul's Travel Blog

Of all the verbal gaffes of former President George W. Bush, few come to mind that were more controversial and troubling as his use of the word “Crusade” to describe our war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. [Perhaps to call it a gaffe–rather than a sort of Freudian slip or intentional political ploy–is generous.] The problem with the word is of course that by comparing the war in Iraq to a historical war waged in the name of religion by Christians against Muslims, Bush suggested that the motive for the modern war was also religious, a continuation of some sort of historical feud between Christianity and Islam. And, coming from a man who professed to hold deeply evangelical Christian beliefs and who was supported by most of America’s radically religious right, this–that there was some sort of religious basis for the war–seemed all too plausible (especially after we failed to discover WMD).

(Let me be clear (as our newly-inaugurated President is apt to say): We are not destined to a “clash of civilizations.” Periods of peaceful, pragmatic coexistence are just as common in the past as incidents of religious conflict. And, if you consider every time the banner of religion is carried as a standard into war, there is usually an equally compelling economic or demographic force that lay under.)

At the time of the earliest Crusades, southern Iberia was very much a part of the Muslim world, in full control of the Almoravid and other Moorish dynasties; the Crusades action took place all the way across the Mediterranean. But Crusades-like Christian/Muslim violence made its way to the Iberian Peninsula, and by the end of the thirteenth century, Christian kingdoms had reduced Moorish holdings in Iberia to more or less modern Andalusia. Even before the time Ferdinand and Isabella completed the Reconquista with the defeat of Granada in 1492, Moorish rule was reduced to isolated cities surviving essentially as tributaries to the Castilian crown.

Ferdinand and Isabella. Some Spaniards today may think of them as heroes of the Reconquista, and Americans may think of them as the visionaries who financed the discovery of the New World, but I can’t help but think of them as the Milosevic of their day. Putting aside the actual conquest itself–territorial conquest was of course much more of an accepted norm back in those days–the ethnic cleansing that Ferdinand and Isabella undertook, most infamously in the Alhambra Decree that expelled all Jews from Iberia (the Sephardic diaspora). Their tools in creating a Christian Spain were forced conversion and expulsion–of people who were native to Iberia and whose ancestors had lived there for *hundreds* of years. It is no wonder that these were also the rulers responsible for genocide and the institutionalization of race slavery in the New World.

Unfortunately, I am sorry to report, a Crusades mentality continues in the Catholic Church of Spain, at least in Cordoba. As I mentioned in my previous post, Cordoba is home to the Great Mosque of Cordoba, a tenth century wonder of a mosque that celebrated Cordoba’s status as the capital of the Umayyads in Spain. In the early 13th century, after the conquest of Cordoba by the (Christian) Castillians, the church decided to convert the mosque into a cathedral. Perhaps recognizing that no building that they built could quite replace the mosque as an architectural achievement, they cut a huge rectangle into its halls to build a church *into* the building. The effect is somewhat surreal–you enter a mosque and at some point suddenly find yourself in a typical Catholic cathedral–but the construction project was also in its way a sort of compromise between historic preservation and establishing the primacy of the Catholic Church. [See posts of 2008.11.10, 2009.02.01, and 2009.03.23 on reuse of religious sites.]

That said, the Archdiocese of Cordoba has produced a totally reprehensible pamphlet that serves as tourists’ main guide to the building. Perhaps ashamed of the fact that today the construction of the church inside the mosque is viewed as a sort of architectural crime, and that the church inside is of far lesser interest to the average visitor than the atmospheric remains of the mosque, the pamphlet is little more than a religious diatribe commemorating the victory of Christian over Muslim, an “us versus them” that is disconcerting to read in the European Union of today:

“It was a joyful day for the entire Christendom, when the Great Mosque, an Islamic temple without equal in the world, which was renowned for its artistic beauty and its symbolic value for the world of Western Islam in terms of political and religious importance, was purified and sanctified with Christian rites after the reconquest of the city by the hands of Saint Ferdinand III, and transformed into a Church of Jesus Christ, dedicated to the Mother of God.”

“It is a historical fact that the basilica of San Vincente was expropriated and destroyed in order to build what would later be the Mosque, a reality that questions the theme of tolerance that was supposedly cultivated in the Cordoba of the moment.” [It is true that the mosque was built on the site of a former church, but it is likely that there was negotiation–whether completely fair we do not know of course–over the site. The relative levels of tolerance in the age of the Moors and during the Inquisition is beyond dispute.]

“It was a matter of recuperating a scared space that had suffered the imposition of a faith that was distant from the Christian experience. . . . Thus the reforms of the Cathedral were motivated by the need to restore the cult that had been interrupted by Islamic domination, and they were a response to the desire of contemplating Christian symbols, or the inconvenience of celebrating the Liturgy amid a sea of columns.”

“Thus the beauty of the Cathedral of Cordoba does not reside in its architectural grandeur, but in the apostolic succession of the Bishop as a symbol of his pastoral service and the unity of the Church, founded upon the Word of the Lord, the sacraments, and the community of believers.”

This, from the people who were guilty of ethnic cleansing and the many other crimes of the Inquisition.

To end this post, some photos of the Great Mosque of Cordoba:

Outside the main building, a courtyard similar to that in Seville (see post of 2009.02.01) is accented with a minaret/steeple.

One of the many doorways–mosques often have many entrances to facilitate the at-times huge flow of people who rush in at the prescribed prayer times.

Inside, the colonnaded hall that is so famous and the landmark feature of the building. The bicolored arches are said to have been inspired by Roman/Byzantine architecture.

Byzantine mosaic also ornaments the spectacular mihrab, arguably the most spectacular ever made.

A look down one row of columns reveals the disruption in the building; while the columns continue in other directions, a huge rectangle in the building was cut open to build a soaring cathedral into the mosque, filled with light.

The work done to build the church of course required some disruptions in the original structure.

The church is a beautiful one, but the most surprising thing is how once inside it, it feels like a church that could be almost anywhere else–and not at all in the middle of a mosque. Sixteenth century King Carlos V reportedly said, “You have built here what you or anyone might have built anywhere else, but you have destroyed what was unique in the world.”

As the pamphlet repeatedly points out, before the mosque, there was actually a church on the site. The old mosaics of St. Vincent’s.

In my post of 2008.11.10, I discussed a common phenomenon: the reuse of religious sites. In that post, I covered the Umayyad Mosque, a Pagan to Christian to Muslim conversion in Damascus; the Ayasofya, one of the greater Christian churches ever built, and now mosque/museum; and the Selimiye Mosque, an almost comical cathedral-turned-mosque in Cyprus. (That post is probably worth reading for some background and general thoughts on the practice.) Now a few months further into our trip, I thought I would revisit that topic, with some more examples.

Andalucia, Spain, where we are now, is one of the relatively few regions in the world where Islam (a relatively recent religion, compared to others) was at once dominant, but then overwhelmed by another faith. (The part of Palestine that is now Israel and parts of India come to mind as the only other major examples–other places that went Muslim stayed Muslim.)

Arab/Muslim influence on Spanish culture is not to be underestimated. In architecture, the decorative arts, language, music, dance and countless other aspects of civilization, the footprint of the Muslim period–after all, more than seven hundred years of history–is almost everywhere in Spain (and the New World, through Spain). Such iconic elements of Spanish culture such as ceramic tiling, flamenco and the cheer “Olé” are from the Muslim era in Iberia, as are words such as alcazar (al qasr) and ojalá (Allah). The mix of Christian Spanish and Muslim Arab brought us the great scientific and philosophical flowering called la Convivencia, which some believe helped usher in the European Renaissance through its introduction of classical and Eastern teachings into Western Europe. The Inquisition was successful in destroying this peaceful coexistence and its benefits, but even if essentially no Muslims (or Jews) were to remain in Spain, the brick and mortar of countless mosques survived the transition–as churches.

I am saving the greatest example of mosque-turned-church, the Mezquita or Great Mosque of Cordoba, for the next post, but below are pictures of other mosques and religious structures from the Muslim era, reused through to the present.

The church of Santa Maria la Mayor in Ronda may originally have been a Roman pagan temple and then a Christian church, but its most recent past life as a mosque is immortalized in the remains of a mihrab, visible inside.

Many church steeples in southern Spain clearly had past lives as minarets. The most celebrated is the tower of the Seville Cathedral, called La Giralda (first image), which is almost identical, save reornamentation on the uppermost levels, to the other minarets built by the Morocco-based Almoravids, such as the Koutoubia in Marrakesh (second image).

Below, a lesser minaret/steeple at San Sebastian church in Ronda

The minaret/steeple of San Juan church in Cordoba clearly reveals its much older age, compared to the rest of the church.

The minaret/steeple of San Marcos church in Seville. There are countless more examples.

Minarets are often the most recognizable survivors–presumably because the Christians found it convenient to keep such significant and majestic features, while they were willing to build a new church alongside–but other features also remain. Near the Giralda in Seville, a domed “koubba” of clearly Moorish origin (first image). A similar Almoravid “koubba” in Marrakesh that was part of the Ben Youssef Mosque complex was used for ablutions (second image).

The courtyard of the Seville Cathedral, known as the Plaza de las Naranjas (note that the Spanish–and English–words for the orange, like the fruit itself, came to the West through Persian/Arabic) clearly occupies the remaining open part of the main courtyard of the old mosque (compare to the courtyard of Cairo’s Mosque of ibn Tulun in the second picture below).

The use of the Moorish style in the interior of this chapel in San Pedro church of Seville argues that such styles can be said to be very much Spanish and in some sense native to Spain–as suitable for use in decorating a church as a mosque. Mozarabs (Christians living in Arab Iberia) and Mudejares (Muslims living in Christian Iberia) bridged a synthesis of culture that resulted in some of the greatest notes of la Convivencia, such as the Alhambra (post to come).