Córdoba, Spain

• 1. Introduction

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  Córdoba, Spain sits in the Guadalquivir Valley under some of the most punishing summer heat in all of Europe, where average highs reach 37 degrees Celsius in July and August and days above 40 degrees are simply ordinary. But the heat is not what makes this city remarkable. What makes Córdoba remarkable is the distance between what it once was and what it is now. By the 10th century it had grown to be the second-largest city in Europe. It held more than 80 libraries and institutions of learning, with knowledge in medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and botany that far exceeded anywhere else on the continent. Its workshops turned out leather goods, metalwork, glazed tiles, and fine textiles. Its fields and orchards supplied cotton, flax, silk, and a wide range of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices. This was a city at the center of the world, or at least at the center of a world that mattered enormously. Then came the year 1009, a revolution, a civil war, and an unraveling that took decades to complete. What happened to Córdoba, why it rose so high, and how it fell and then changed again are questions this documentary follows from the first traces of human presence in the valley all the way to a city of roughly 325,000 people living alongside ruins that still draw visitors from across the planet.

• 2. Before the Romans

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  The oldest sign of human presence in the Córdoba area is a Neanderthal remain dating to somewhere between roughly 42,000 and 35,000 BC. Long after that, pre-urban settlements grew up around the mouth of the Guadalquivir from the 8th century BC onward, and the people living there gradually acquired skills in copper and silver metallurgy. The first historical mention of a settlement in the area comes from the period of Carthaginian expansion across the Guadalquivir. Roman forces took the town in 206 BC.

  In 169 BC, the Roman consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus, grandson of the Marcus Claudius Marcellus who had governed both Hispania Ulterior and Hispania Citerior, established a newer settlement beside the existing one, though some historians place that founding in 152 BC. Between 143 and 141 BC the town endured a siege by Viriatus. A forum existed in the city by 113 BC. The Cordoba Treasure, a remarkable object blending local and Roman artistic traditions, was buried in the city during this period; it now resides in the British Museum.

  The town became a full Roman colony between 46 and 45 BC, taking the name Colonia Patricia. Julius Caesar sacked it in 45 BC because of its loyalty to Pompey, and Augustus later resettled it with veteran soldiers. It became the capital of Baetica and the main center of Roman intellectual life in this part of the Iberian Peninsula. The philosopher Seneca the Younger, his father the orator Seneca the Elder, and his nephew the poet Lucan all came from this city. In the later Roman period, Hosius of Corduba was the dominant figure of the Latin Church throughout the earlier part of the 4th century. The city then passed into the orbit of the Byzantine Empire between 552 and 572 before the Visigoths took it in the late 6th century.

• 3. The Umayyad City

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  Muslim forces captured Córdoba in 711 or 712. Unlike other Iberian towns of the time, no capitulation agreement was signed; the position was taken by storm. In 716 it became the provincial capital, subordinate to the Caliphate of Damascus, replacing Seville in that role. The center of the old Roman and Visigothic city was transformed into the walled medina, and over time as many as 21 suburbs grew up around it.

  The decisive political moment came in 756. Following the Abbasid overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate after 750, the surviving Umayyad prince Abd ar-Rahman crossed to the Iberian Peninsula. He proclaimed himself Emir Abd ar-Rahman I after defeating the existing governor, Yusuf ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri, at a battle outside the city in May 756. Between 785 and 786, he ordered construction of the Great Mosque of Córdoba. His successors expanded it repeatedly, and a major 10th-century expansion produced the elaborate mihrab still visible today.

  Historians estimate the city's population in the 9th century at anywhere from 75,000 to 160,000. Córdoba exported manufactured goods including leather, metalwork, glazed tiles, and textiles, and agricultural produce that ranged from fruits and vegetables to cotton, flax, and silk. Its more than 80 libraries and institutions of learning put it far ahead of the rest of Europe in medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and botany. The vizier al-Mansur, who was the de facto ruler of al-Andalus from 976 to 1002, later burned most of the philosophy books from the library of Caliph al-Hakam II to satisfy Maliki jurists; most of what remained was sold off or lost in the civil strife that followed.

  Abd ar-Rahman III came to power as emir in 912 and spent years campaigning systematically to reassert Córdoba's authority across al-Andalus. In 929, confident after sustained military and diplomatic efforts, he declared himself caliph, a title that directly challenged both the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad and the Fatimid caliphs in North Africa. That declaration inaugurated Córdoba's greatest period of power in the 10th century. Abd ar-Rahman III then built the palace-city of Madinat al-Zahra to the west, and al-Mansur later built another palatine complex to the east. Economic historian J. Bradford DeLong estimates Córdoba's population at 400,000 around the year 1000; other estimates for the same era range from 100,000 to 1,000,000.

• 4. The Fitna and After

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  On the 15th of February 1009, with Hisham II serving as caliph and Abd al-Rahman Sanchuelo acting as his de facto regent, a revolution broke out in Córdoba and produced a rival claimant to the caliphate. That date marks the opening of the Fitna, a prolonged civil war across al-Andalus. Berbers entered and sacked the city in May 1013. On the 30th of November 1031, Hisham III was driven out of Córdoba and an oligarchic republic took the place of the caliphate.

  Under the Banu Yahwar who followed, Córdoba's power barely extended beyond the city walls, and historians estimate its 11th-century population at around 65,000, a steep drop from its peak. In 1070, forces from the Abbadid Taifa of Seville arrived nominally to help defend the city against al-Mamun of Toledo, but they seized control for themselves and sent the last ruler of the Taifa of Córdoba, Abd-Al Malik, into exile. Al-Mamun pressed his own campaign to take the city and finally entered it triumphantly on the 15th of February 1075, only to die there barely five months later, apparently poisoned.

  The Almoravids seized the city by force in March 1091. In 1121 the population revolted against the abuses of the Almoravid governor. A coalition that included Alfonso VIII of Castile allied with ibn Mardanish and his stepfather ibn Hamusk to besiege Córdoba between 1158 and 1160, ravaging the surrounding countryside without ever taking the city. A further period of shifting allegiances followed until Ferdinand III of Castile entered Córdoba on the 29th of June 1236 after a siege of several months. Arab sources record the fall on the 30th of June 1236. The Great Mosque was converted into a Catholic cathedral dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and Ferdinand III granted the city a fuero in 1241 based on the Liber Iudiciorum and the customs of Toledo.

• 5. The Mosque and Its Layers

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  Abd ar-Rahman I ordered the Great Mosque built between 784 and 786 AD, and for centuries it stood as the third-largest mosque in the world. It was a structure that wove Islamic architecture together with elements drawn from Roman and Visigothic building traditions already present on the site. Later Umayyad rulers added a minaret and enlarged the prayer hall. A major expansion in the 10th century produced the elaborate mihrab and the ornate embellishments that still define the interior.

  After Ferdinand III took the city in 1236, the mosque became a cathedral. In the 16th century it underwent significant modifications, yet much of the original structure survived those changes. The building received its UNESCO World Heritage designation in 1984. In 1994, the status was extended to encompass the entire historic centre of Córdoba.

  The conversion also carried a symbolic freight beyond architecture. Ferdinand III ordered the return to Santiago de Compostela of the church bells that Almanzor had looted and brought to Córdoba using Christian war prisoners in the late 10th century. The Minaret of San Juan, built in 930 AD, traces a parallel arc: the mosque it once served was replaced by a church, and the minaret became a tower, still displaying its double horseshoe-arch windows. The Calahorra Tower, at the southern end of the Roman Bridge, dates to the Almohad period and now houses the Al-Andalus Living Museum. The Caliphal Baths, a hammam complex created in the 10th century and subsequently expanded, opened as a museum site in 2006. Together these structures record not a single faith or culture but a long sequence of them, each leaving its mark on the same stones.

• 6. Modern Córdoba

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  The city's Early Modern golden age ran roughly from 1530 to 1580, driven by trade in agricultural products and cloth from Los Pedroches, with the population peaking at about 50,000 by 1571. Stagnation and decline followed, and by the 18th century the population had fallen to 20,000. Recovery only began again in the early 20th century.

  The Seville-Córdoba railway line opened on the 2nd of June 1859, connecting the city to the wider rail network that would follow, including links to Jerez and Cádiz in 1861 and, after the connection with Manzanares in 1866, to Madrid.

  On the 18th of July 1936, the military governor of the province launched the Nationalist coup in the city, bombing the civil government and arresting the civil governor, Rodríguez de León. In the weeks that followed, around 2,000 people were executed in a bloody repression ordered by General Queipo de Llano. The Francoist repression across the wartime and immediate post-war period from 1936 to 1951 is estimated to have led to around 9,579 killings in the province.

  With a population of 324,902 as of 2024, Córdoba is today the 12th-largest city in Spain and the 3rd-largest in Andalusia. Its municipality covers 1,254.25 km2, making it the largest municipality in Andalusia and the fourth largest in all of Spain. High-speed rail connects it to Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Málaga, and Zaragoza. The May festivals, including Los Patios de Córdoba, recognized as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, draw intense tourism each year. The Posada del Potro, an inn mentioned in Don Quixote, remained active until 1972. Statues of ten Archangel Raphaels, known as the Triumphs of Saint Raphael, stand at landmarks across the city, including the Roman Bridge and the Plaza del Potro, marking a devotion that stretches back centuries.