Córdoba

When I traveled to Istanbul, Turkey last March, and saw the Hagia Sofia (a museum that was first a giant Byzantine church before the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, then became a mosque), I became deeply disconcerted.  I found it disturbing that one culture could entirely take over a previous culture's worship space, scrubbing it clean of any sign of the previous faith, carving out greek lettering and crosses, white washing mosaics, removing the alter, and replacing them with entirely new symbols.  I expressed this feeling to my professors, and aware that I was going to Spain this fall.  They told me that I needed to visit the Mezquita de Córdoba, to experience the same affect, but from a different point of view.  And since then, all anyone could tell me was to go see the Mezquita de Córdoba, that it was beautiful and magnificent, but also strange, due to the presence of a baroque cathedral smack dab in the center of it.  On Saturday I finally saw the Mezquita and experienced the out of body feeling brought on by walking into a cathedral from a mosque.

There are four sections of the mosque, not including the cathedral.  Three are made of pillar after pillar holding up these red and white arches.  The enormity of it is impressive.  It just goes on and on and on.  Every direction you look, all you see are arches and pillars.  Eventually, though, it changes.  The mihrab, pointing to Mecca, the holy city of Islam, decorated in gold.  I found myself thinking about Turkey, about how this Mezquita compared to those I saw on that trip in March, how it was similar, and how entirely different.  The art, the architecture.  And yet, the same religion, coming from the same root.  They were under the auspices of what we call "the Islamic Empire", but the Ottomans, coming along a few hundred years later, were a very different culture.

And finally the moment came that people had been preparing me for since I saw the Hagia Sofia.  We walked from the shadowy reds of the ancient mosque into the white light of a small baroque cathedral, overbearing in ceiling carvings and paintings.  It was as though I had stepped into an entirely different world.  It was so different, unreal almost.  When the Christians conquered Córdoba, they didn't even build a worship space that fit within the atmosphere of the existing space.  No, this was jarring.  Discordant.  Confusing.  And I feel like I would have appreciated the cathedral more if it wasn't inserted in the middle of a former mosque.  The other parts of the mosque that are now Christian, as in side chapels used for weddings, prayers, confessions, etc, feel much more appropriate, all designed in darker stone and red velvet.  It appears very much in a tradition catholic atmosphere and yet does not clash with the ghosts of an ancient past.

My professors who led the class trip to Turkey were correct.  The Mezquita gave me a lot to think about.  More than I could in one day, and I still am processing it.  One thing that stood out strongly for me though...The Mezquita de Córdoba is a symbol of the multi-cultural history of Andalusia.  Spain isn't all about tapas or bull fighting.  Its about all of it.  And then some.