Great Mosque of Córdoba

The Great Mosque of Cordoba is the well-known mosque in Cordoba. The museum's sources describe it in two accounts: one transmitted by al-Maqqari, and a detailed description by al-Umari. ^{1 2}

Al-Maqqari reports, from the author of "Nashq al-Azhar", that the mosque had a yellow-brass chandelier carrying a thousand lamps, and that it was said its making took seven years. He also reports that it had three columns of red marble: on one was written the name of Muhammad, on the second an image of Moses' staff and the People of the Cave, and on the third an image of Noah's raven. Al-Maqqari comments that he did not find this among the careful historians of al-Andalus, and that it seems far-fetched to him. ¹

Ibn Fadl Allah al-Umari says the mosque is a hundred cubits long and eighty wide, half of it roofed and half a courtyard. Its roofed part has nineteen arches, and among its pillars there are a thousand, small and large. The ceiling panels are of Tartushi pine. ²

In its storeroom is a Qur'an that two men lift because of its weight. Al-Umari says that it contains four leaves of the Qur'an copied by Uthman with his own hand, with spots of his blood on them. Its minbar is of ebony and box-wood. ²

There is a censer, on which six craftsmen worked for seven years, and al-Umari considers that it has no equal in craftsmanship anywhere in the inhabited world. Its minaret is climbed by two staircases set at odds, so that the two climbers meet only at the top, and it holds three hundred columns and three apples, one of gold and two of silver. Sixty men serve the mosque. ²