Cordoba - Charming and Corny
Trip Start
May 05, 2008
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8
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Trip End
May 09, 2009
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Córdoba,
Spain and Canary Islands
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Thursday night, we went out to the fair, which turned out to be a perfect example of sensory overload and provided many examples of things we thought to be cornier than Kansas. There must have been ten thousand people at the fair, which covered an area of about a square kilometer. At least a third of the women and most of the girls were very flashy and skin-tight traditional dresses. The men were relatively less eager to get in touch with tradition, but we still saw a lot of men dressed up as caballeros, complete with horses under them. At the fair, one would have the choice of going to the western half, which was meant for children and which had all the rides and accoutrements which one would expect from an amusement park. Bright lights and an abundance of junk foods based on sugar means that this section is hard on all the senses, particularly the sight and hearing.
The Mezquita
If one gets tired of it, one can always go to the eastern half, which is hard on the other remaining senses, being the section for the adults. This is where cheap wine and beer is sold in humungous quantities alongside roasted meat in giant tents where corny music from all genres is blared out, and where the caballeros on horseback strut their stuff on the sand alleys (with the horses leaving behind some souvenirs to make sure that no sense remains unassailed).Leaving the fair behind early (around 11 - apparently the party goes on till 6am), we went to bed and the next day we visited what is normally Cordoba´s greatest attraction: the Mezquita. Back in the 8th and 9th centuries, when Paris and London were collections of mud huts numbering perhaps 10 thousand, Cordoba was one of the two great cities of Europe, alongside Constantinople. It was a city of half a million (bigger than now), and one of the greatest cultural centres of the world. In order to cement his reputation as the rightful ruler of the Arab world (somewhat undeserved: his family had been dethroned from the Caliphate in Baghdad), the Ummayad Emir Abd'Al Rahman I decided to build what was then the greatest mosque in all of Islam. This is the Mezquita (mosque), whose pictures are attached below. Reconquered by the Christians in 1236, the mosque was converted into a church in the 16th century: the result is an architectural jumble of muslim red and white arches mixed with statues of christian saints and of intricate muslim geometric designs underneath tall and white christian domes.
We next decided to visit another one of Cordoba´s draws: the ruins of Medina Al-Zahara, which was a palace-city, a sort of 10th century Andalusian Versailles, which according to legend Abd'Al Rahman III had built for his capricious concubine Zahara (the sweet one). In reality, it was a centre of power and administration meant to administer a newly consolidated kingdom at the height of its power. Nowadays hints remain of its former glory and it´s an interesting place to visit, but for over a thousand years its only denizens were song birds (whose lovely song one can still hear when strolling along its walls), and for the past hundred years archeologists and tourists.
We will spend the remainder of our time here relaxing and Sunday we will head over to Seville.
