La Mezquita

By this stage of life, I just celebrated 60 years, I wouldn't have guessed that I would be calling a building just visited the most amazing building I have ever seen, but this was the case with  the Mezquita in Cordaba, Andulicía. I remeber seeing the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona for the first time in my early 20's and how shocked I was as the bus drove up to find that it was a real place and not the artists impression that I had assumed it to be having seen it on postcards upon entering Spain. Still my realtionship with the Gaudi Cathedral is still a little ambiguous, whereas it was an intoxicated love I experienced on entering the Mezquita. 

The layered history, so relevant for our times. The Great Mosque built in 785 CE on the site of an earlier christian church, which in turn was possibly built on an older roman temple. Converted to the Christian Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption in 1236, it is currently the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Córdaba. One wonders what its future holds. It was heartening to read that this great fusion of religious and architectural styles was made possible by the fact that, for the majority of its history, there was peace and collaboration between the invested religions. Thankfully the Taliban weren't in the mix with their track record of respect for cultural heritage.

When the muslim philosopher poet Muhammad Iqbal visited the Great Cathedral of Córdoba in 1932 the deep emotional response it invoked inspired him to write one of his greatest poems, 'The Mosque of Córdoba'. He described the landmark as ; 'sacred for lovers of art, you are the glory of faith, You have made Andulicía pure as the holy land'.

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