The Role and Meaning of Religious Architecture in the Umayyad State: Secondary Mosques

Abstract

Historiography and archaeological research have traditionally defined mosques mainly as religious spaces or places to pray, without further specifications. This simplification has usually dominated the analyses of mosques, while other uses or functional aspects of these buildings were put aside. The scarcity of material information available for years to approach these buildings, together with the dominance of the more monumental examples—such as the great mosque of Córdoba—provoked that analyses about other more modest mosques were scarce or almost inexistent. However, in recent decades, the proliferation of real estate building activities has led to the recovery of many new and fresh archaeological data related to other mosques different from the Friday ones. Specifically, in Córdoba, the volume of information recovered has been enormous, and concerns not only mosques as isolated buildings, but also their urban environments, construction processes, and evolution along the centuries. Therefore, in this paper, we offer a summarized overview of the state of the arts about research on mosques in al-Andalus, presenting the main problems and limitations of the topic until now, and also the case of Córdoba and the main results achieved there as a reference for further actions to be undertaken in the rest of the territory.

Entangling Urban and Religious History: A New Methodology

“…This orientation was not entirely insignificant for everyday religious practices: it was indicated by so-called qibla walls, which were used as a guide for praying, animal sacrifices and for taking care of bodily needs. Carmen González, however, in her study of mosques in Al-Andalus in the Middle Ages, has found that, as the Great Mosque of Córdoba, the secondary mosques of the city were also not accurately aligned towards Mecca (González Gutiérrez 2016, González Gutiérrez 2018. Similar findings were made earlier by Jiménez (Jiménez 1991) and Rius (Rius 2000), who found that almost all mosques in Al-Andalus identified today were poorly oriented in relation to the sacred city, or by Bonine (Bonine 1990), who obtained similar results after his analyses in Morocco.…”

Religious Buildings in Early al-Andalus: Origins, Consolidation and Prevalence in Urban Contexts

“…From the year 929 until the fall of the Umayyad caliphate in the first half of the eleventh century, Córdoba will experience an astonishing urban growth which responded, to a greater extent, to official building projects in which mosques continued to play a very prominent role. Their importance for the Islamization was combined with clear intents of affirmation of the Umayyad presence and predominance in the city through the monumentalization and visibility of these elements (see González Gutiérrez 2016Gutiérrez , 2018. The existence of this policy of Umayyad proselytism-which is fully evident in the erection of the Friday mosque and, of course, in its subsequent enlargements-, relates to the need to ensure the militancy of the jās .…”