Word: al-andalus
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...RDOBA, Spain—Tourists from all over the world come here for one reason: to see the Mezquita (Spanish for “mosque”) that was built when Cordoba was part of the Muslim-ruled kingdom of al-Andalus. Although it is widely considered to be one of the finest achievements of the Western Islamic Empire, you wouldn’t know it from reading the information pamphlet provided at the entrance...
Like their geological counterparts, the fault lines of history seem to converge on the countries of the Mediterranean basin. It was in the Spanish city of Granada that King Boabdil, the last Moorish monarch of Muslim al-Andalus, made his final stand against the Christian forces of the reconquista before fleeing to North Africa. Here, too, are buried Ferdinand of Aragon and his queen, Isabella of Castile, who ousted Boabdil in 1492 and later reneged on a promise to allow religious tolerance in their newly conquered kingdom. These days Ferdinand and Isabella must be spinning in their shared mausoleum...
...taking bells from church spires and converting them into mosque lamps. The most impressive single work of sculpture in the show, the 11th century Pisa griffin, is so hybrid that without a context, scholars seem unable to decide where it comes from -- or even whether it is from al-Andalus at all. It may equally well be Egyptian, North African or Iranian, though the Pisans themselves (who installed it on the facade of their cathedral) believed it was war booty from their conquest of Majorca, once an Arab fiefdom. Severely holed by bullets in the 19th century, it remains...
...preserved by Arab scholars, without whose efforts we would know little or nothing of Aristotle. In science, Europe until the 14th century was illiterate compared with the Arab world, and a group of exquisitely made brass instruments in this show reminds one that the universal astrolabe was invented in al-Andalus around...
...sees the forms of Roman antiquity dissolving into the Islamic taste for allover pattern; eaten away by deep carving, a recognizably Ionic capital turns into a web of exquisite stone lace, a sort of architectural counterpart to the deeply incised ivory caskets and pyxes favored by the courts of al-Andalus. One of the most impressive bowls in this show, a deep conical form bearing on its inside surface a design of a Portuguese nao, or trading ship, so powerful in its rhythms of hull and sail that the concavity of the dish seems almost to reverse itself under...