Córdoba and Toledo: What Al-Andalus Remembers

The Great Mosque of Córdoba was begun in 785 under Abd al-Rahman I. Its forest of red and white double arches grew for two more centuries, as the city became one of the largest and most learned in Europe. Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in it, traded in it and, at times, argued in its courts and libraries.

In Toledo, around the year 1200, the Jewish community built a synagogue whose white horseshoe arches and carved capitals look, to modern eyes, like a mosque. It is now called Santa María la Blanca, because it later became a church. The building is the argument: three traditions in one set of stones.

The convivencia was not a paradise. It was something more useful: proof that difficult neighbours can build something beautiful together.

An honest golden age

Historians still argue about how golden the age was. There were periods of protection and periods of persecution, under Muslim and Christian rulers alike; Maimonides' own family fled Córdoba. The story ends in 1492 with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

We tell it anyway, honestly, because memory is a resource. When the Abraham Accords speak of a shared heritage, these are the rooms they mean.