Dynastic History | Great Mosque of Córdoba, the Eastern Naves — The Chamberlain Built, the Caliph Did Not Appear

Hishām II became caliph in 976, aged ten. By 978 the chamberlain — the ḥājib — Muḥammad ibn Abī ʿĀmir, known in Spanish as Almanzor from his title al-Manṣūr, held the working power of the state. He kept it until his death in 1002, and his sons held it after him until 1008. Hishām remained caliph throughout. He was kept away from public business, and the historians who describe his position disagree over how much of that was captivity and how much was arrangement.

In 987 the ḥājib enlarged the Friday mosque. Extending it southward was not possible, the river bank being where it is, so he added eight aisles along the eastern flank and ran the courtyard and prayer hall out by roughly forty-eight metres. The consequence is still visible: al-Ḥakam II's mihrab, built to stand at the centre of the qibla wall, was left well off-centre, which is the building's own record of who was commissioning work in the 980s. The eastern aisles use plainer materials than the earlier phases, a difference Spanish scholarship reads in terms of cost and supply rather than taste.

The mosque has served as a cathedral since 1236. In 2006 the diocese of Córdoba registered the building in the land registry for a fee of thirty euros; in 2016 the city council's secretary general reported that the registration conferred no ownership, and both the ownership and the building's name remain argued over in Spain. Visitors entering from the east walk al-Manṣūr's aisles first.

📸 Cover: The columned naves of al-Manṣūr's eastern extension, Paul Asman and Jill Lenoble, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons