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En este artículo se reflexiona sobre lo que hoy sabemos de los espacios religiosos durante el llamado «islam temprano». En el contexto de los últimos estudios sobre ese período y su realidad cultural y religiosa surgen unas preguntas básicas que, si bien no encuentran todavía respuesta segura, conviene plantearse. Asimismo, debemos revisar los paradigmas usados hasta ahora para abordar su análisis, asumiendo lo que los historiadores han definido como una larga fase de transición. Ante la escasez y ambigüedad de las fuentes escritas coetáneas, los monumentos y los restos materiales conservados se convierten en los principales y más fiables documentos históricos. Que se omita su mención en los textos no impide que aquellas obras existan ni que se pueda hacer una aproximación a las razones por las que se crearon. De la misma manera, es altamente significativa la ausencia de respaldo material a ciertas informaciones de los relatos, sobre todo si esa ausencia es generalizada geográficamente hablando. Por eso, cabe preguntarse ¿cómo y dónde rezaban las primeras comunidades islamizadas tanto en el Mediterráneo como en al-Andalus? ¿Sabemos lo que buscamos cuando hablamos de las primeras mas??id o lugares de prosternación?/n This article reflects on what we know today about religious spaces during the so-called «Early Islam». In the context of the latest studies about this period and its cultural and religious reality, there are some basic questions worth asking, though still with no sure answer. Likewise, we must review the paradigms used so far to approach their analysis, assuming what historians have defined as a long phase of transition. Faced with the scarcity and ambiguity of contemporary written sources, the monuments and material remains preserved become the main and most reliable historical documents. The lack of mentions in the texts does not mean those works do not exist or that we could not make an approximation of the reasons behind their creation. Similarly, the absence of material support for certain information in the stories is highly significant, especially if that absence is generalized, geographically speaking. Therefore, it is worth asking how and where did the first Islamized communities pray both in the Mediterranean and in al-Andalus? Do we know what we are looking for when we speak of the first mas??id or places of prostration?/n

In 1267–1269, the first Mamluk sultan al-Ẓāhir Baybarṣ ordered the construction of a great Friday mosque in Cairo. Its formal and typological features inspired by the Syrian architecture established a symbolic connection with the classic Islamic caliphates (Umayyad and Abbasid) to strengthen and legitimise his sovereignty over Egypt and Syria. In 1335, Sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn (d.1341) reconstructed the great mosque of the citadel of Cairo following Baybarṣ’ model. The revival of the hypostyle prayer hall, the association of dome plus basilica, as well as the use of glass-mosaics and spolia materials are some of the visual strategies and sources of self-affirmation analysed in this chapter in the light of previous practice in the tenth century in al-Andalus Umayyad caliphate.

The appearance of a group of Roman statues and sarcophagi in different buildings of the palace of Madinat al-Zahra⁠ʾ founded by Caliph ʿAbd al-Rahman III (r. 912–61) raises several questions about the revival of classical antiquity promoted by the caliphal court of Cordoba in the tenth century. The pieces—reused as basins for water fountains—had hitherto been considered irrelevant to the architectural and historical study of the caliphal palace, even though their discovery and location in specific buildings of the complex are essential to understanding and determining the function of these spaces. In addition, this discovery will help to interpret the range of the cultural development of the caliphal court and its relevance in the construction of political theory in al-Andalus in the tenth century. In this article I first examine the intellectual context in which these pieces were displayed, which lets us understand the reasons these particular characters—heroes, philosophers, and Muses—and scenes were chosen. I also consider the relationship these pieces had with their designated locations and to what extent their existence might suggest that these were spaces related to scientific and intellectual activities.

My first exposure to the epigraphic program of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, published in 2001, came from reading an article on the ideological meaning of the decoration and the Quranic citations inscribed in al-Ḥakam II&rsquo, s addition to the building. In that article, I concluded that the Quranic verses found in the mosque were chosen not only for being a universal proclamation of divine power and praise for the Umayyad dynasty, as proposed by Nuha Khoury in 1996, but also because they clearly fitted in with the particular Andalusi, or rather Cordoban, religious, cultural, and political context in the first half of the 10th century. Most of the inscriptions had been read in the 19th century by Amador de los R&iacute, os, but some of them remained uninterpreted. Given that they were an essential part of the ideological message, it seemed appropriate to revisit the critical reading of the epigraphic program and determine its full meaning. Later, I discussed other architectural aspects of the Great Mosque in which the links to the Andalusi and the eastern Umayyad traditions are a key aspect in understanding why these forms were chosen. Damascus, the eastern Umayyad capital, and to a lesser extent Medina and the Abbasid capitals, became the model for the caliphs of Cordoba. This article proposes to revisit the main architectural and decorative features of the caliphal enlargements of the Great Mosque of Cordoba in order to reflect on the meaning and forms of its epigraphic program.

This article is a new analysis of the Koranic inscriptions that were made on the doors of the Great Mosque at Cordova during the time of the Caliphate (10th century). Although not all these inscriptions are well-preserved, a new approach to the Koranic verses has revealed enough unique aspects to suggest a fresh interpretation of their meaning and intention. These inscriptions are part of a well-defined epigraphic program with a complex meaning related to the political, social and religious context of the time. This program also accounts for allusions to the anti-Christian polemic of the era. In this sense, the religious epigraphy of this mosque constitutes a valuable historical record of the Umayyad caliphate of al-Andalus.En este artículo se realiza una relectura de las inscripciones de carácter religioso de las puertas de la Mezquita de Córdoba en época califal. A pesar de que no todas se han conservado, el estudio de conjunto reveló suficientes elementos singulares como para sugerir nuevas hipótesis en torno al sentido y la intencionalidad de los textos coránicos escogidos. Las inscripciones, tanto interiores como exteriores, conforman un programa epigráfico perfectamente coherente y dotado de un complejo significado ligado al contexto político, social y religioso de la época. El programa incluye asimismo alusiones a la polémica anti-cristiana en el siglo x. En ese sentido, la mezquita cordobesa constituye un valioso documento histórico del Califato omeya de al-Andalus.

1. Les alentours de la Grande Mosquee de Cordoue aux IVe/Xe et Ve/XIe siecles De la meme facon que la cathedrale dans les villes chretiennes, la mosquee principale etait le cœur d'une ville musulmane medievale. Toute la population de Cordoue assistait a la priere communautaire du vendredi dans la grande mosquee, al-masjid al-ja¯mi‘. Le sermon (khutdba) de ce jour-la contenait des appels religieux, politiques et des annonces de tous genres. Mais la mosquee principale servait aussi a d'autres actes publics, comme la proclamation et la soumission du peuple au nouvel emir ou encore la ceremonie de remise des fanions de l'armee quand elle partait en campagne. En outre, la cour de justice et les activites d'enseignement superieur siegeaient au sein de la mosquee. En fait c'etait le centre religieux, politique, social et culturel de la ville (Figure 1).

The article analyses the process of conversion of the urban and rural mosques into churches in Toledo between the xi and xm centuries. Our starting point is a document that dates the conversion of the former mosque of Bāb al-Mardūm back to 1183, a century after the conquest of the city by Alfonso VI. Some of the aspects studied here are the role played by the King, the Church and the Christian population in the share-out of the mosques and their properties, the different uses of the mosques not converted into parish churches, or the differences and the similarities between this process and the one in other regions of al-Andalus. At the end we suggest hypotheses about the mosque founded by Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥadīdī in 390/999-1000., Partiendo de un nuevo documento que fecha la conversión de la antigua mezquita de Bāb al-Mardūm en capilla en 1183, un siglo después de la conquista de Toledo por Alfonso VI, se ha tratado de indagar en el proceso de cristianización de las mezquitas urbanas y rurales de Toledo entre los siglos XI y XIII: el papel desempeñado en su reparto y el de sus habices por el Rey, la Iglesia y los diferentes grupos de población, el destino de aquellas mezquitas que no se consagraron, o las semejanzas y las particularidades del proceso toledano respecto al llevado a cabo en otras regiones andalusíes. Para acabar, se plantean algunas preguntas e hipótesis sobre la función y el carácter de la propia mezquita, fundada por Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥadīdī en el año 390/999-1000.