Mezquita de Cordoba

If you ever get a chance to visit Cordoba, just do it. Just to wander idly the streets of the old Jewish quarter feels like north africa, with improbably and cool courtyards almost hidden and lovely places to sit and eat. Perhaps a wee bit prettified or recent years, it still has reminders of its history wherever you turn. It was in the 10th Century the most populous city in the world, then under Islamic rule a city thriving with commerce and learning, and worship and tolerance. Small subtle things like a star of David over a door way or a rendering in arabic script. Less subtle things like an unexpected corridor to the museum of the inquisition (yes nobody expected that - sorry couldn't let that one pass python fans), nothing amusing about this at all, a shameful, shameful example of the worst of our history.

The star attraction (yes I'm a tourist) is the the Mezquita, originally a mosque enormous in scale, it was "Christianised" follow the conquest of the city of the reconquistidors action in 13th Century and whilst much of the original mosque features remain, the doors, the cool spaces, the Koranic inscriptions, the lack of icon or human image depicted anywhere, then... within it's walls you find the full baroque, wedding cake typical of many cathedrals in mediteranian Christendom.

I'll post a few photos on flickr but this one is todays blip. I liked the mosque part of the building best, the space, the cool, the light, the simplicity of repeating patterns, but the whole thing left me with a lot unresolved. Here in the light through the window, one of two women I saw in what appeared to me Muslim attire, would I suspect have many other stronger unresolved concerns, a woman, in a mosque or is it a cathedral, on perhaps deconsecrated ground, that was taken by force by the stronger power.