The Caliphate of Córdoba, also known as the Córdoban Caliphate, was an Arab Islamic state ruled by the Umayyad dynasty from 929 to 1031. Its territory comprised most of Iberia and parts of North Africa, with its capital in Córdoba. It succeeded the Emirate of Córdoba upon the self-proclamation of Umayyad emir Abd ar-Rahman III as caliph in January 929. The period was characterized by an expansion of trade and culture, and saw the construction of masterpieces of Andalusi architecture.
Gold dinar of Hisham II, dated 396 AH (1006–7 AD)
Exterior of the Great Mosque
The Pyxis of al-Mughira, a carved ivory casket made at Madinat al-Zahra dated to 968
Vegetal motifs and figurative imagery carved in ivory on the Leyre Casket, made in 1004–1005
Al-Andalus was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula. The term is used by modern historians for the former Islamic states in modern-day Gibraltar, Portugal, Spain, and Southern France. The name describes the different Muslim states that controlled these territories at various times between 711 and 1492. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied most of the peninsula and part of present-day southern France (Septimania) under Umayyad rule. These boundaries changed constantly through a series of conquests Western historiography has traditionally characterized as the Reconquista, eventually shrinking to the south and finally to the Emirate of Granada.
19th-century portrait of Abd al-Rahman I, from Estoria de España.
Interior of the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba, the former Great Mosque built by Abd ar-Rahman I in 785, later expanded by his successors
Abd al-Rahman III receiving ambassador John of Gorze of Otto I the Great at the Medina Azahara, by Dionisio Baixeras Verdaguer, 1885.
A silk textile fragment from the last Muslim dynasty of Al-Andalus, the Nasrid Dynasty (1232–1492), with the epigraphic inscription "glory to our lord the Sultan".
