Submitted by Emily Bange on the 2012 fall semester program in Granada, Spain…
Yesterday I traveled with our group and our amazing director, Amalia, to her home city of Cordoba. Cordoba is important in the history of Spain because it was the capital of the Omeyan dynasty when the Arabs ruled southern Spain. It was a city of culture and learning that produced some of the most important literary and medical works of the time. One of the more significant medical advances was the invention of glasses, or at least the idea of them and the invention of lenses used to help people see. Actual glasses that stay on you face without you holding them there were invented much later. But we owe the gift of glasses to this man, Mohamed Al-Gafequi. We decided that since he gave us he gift of glasses, we would help him out a little and protect his eyes from the sun!
The most awesome part of the trip was La Mesquita, the huge mosque-turned cathedral near the Rio Guadalquivir in Cordoba. It is gorgeous and walking inside is like entering another world. The columns create a forest that you want to explore, making it really difficult to stand still and listen to all the history. But I’m glad I did! This mosque was originally a Visigoth church prior to the Muslim conquest and it was rapidly converted into a mosque because the capital of Al-Andalus (the territory in the Iberian Peninsula occupied by the Muslims from 711 to 1492) had to have a mosque. Since the Reconquista, which ended in 1492, it has been converted into a Cathedral, but structurally it has not changed very much.
