The investigation into the site where the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba is located will continue next year. The Deiure research project, led by professors from the University of Córdoba Alberto León and Jose Antonio Garriguetannounced this Monday new excavations in the Patio de los Naranjos, in an area different from that which has been studied in recent years, to find new elements that shed light on the past of the place, where there was an episcopal complex from the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries AD. They will be in 2025.
New data is thus sought after the excavations carried out by Raimundo Ortiz found very significant remains that shed light not only on the previous life of the place, but also on the urban design of the neighborhood itself.
He himself said it clearly yesterday José Antonio Garriguetwho participated in the Academic Day organized by the Cathedral Chapter to celebrate 40 years of the Mosque-Cathedral as a world heritage site, and participated in a presentation during which he spoke about his project, aimed at knowing the urban environment of the temple and the city in theLast 1,500 years.
In this work it is necessary to obtain information on an area which could have been between five and ten hectares, on a city which at that time numbered around 78 and on a place which acquired great importance. There they prayed, but they also collected taxes and even administered justice.
Garriguet explained that this is a diachronic study of the southern zone of the Historic center of Cordoba whose heart cannot be other than the monument. “It occupies it from a physical point of view, but it must be understood from an urban planning point of view,” he said about the research team, of a multidisciplinary nature, in which both the temple than what surrounds it.
Previous structures
The excavations of the Patio de los Naranjos and the discovery of the episcopal complex have provided a lot of information on the period known as Late Antiquity, because if there are Roman remains, it will be difficult to access them. Of course, previous structures were seen and the functioning of the system was studied. river port of Guadalquivir. Garriguet explained that they want to develop links with the neighboring Alcazar, as a center of power.
Research carried out in recent years has shown how the so-called city center, that is to say the political, economic and religious heart, has moved between different points. Thus, José Antonio Garriguet recalled that at the time of the Roman Republic and the Empire It was in the same place as today, that is, around the current Plaza de Las Tendillas and Claudio Marcelo Street.
From there they left main roads. From the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, it moved south, towards the Guadalquivir and what is today precisely the Mosque-Cathedral. “There were also parts of the city at that time that were starting to become depopulated,” he said.
From this moment there remain the remains which today are called the episcopal complex, the heart of Cordoba of primitive Christianity, and on which the Umayyad mosque was later erected. And it was like this until not so long ago, in historical terms: until the 19th century, with the arrival of rail moved the center of the city north again, where it is now. “It is urbanizing again in a perspective that could be described as bourgeois,” he concluded.
The southern area was the center of power at the end of the Late Antique era and that is why the Umayyadswhen they established their capital in Cordoba, they remained on the site where the episcopal complex was located and, according to some Arab sources, also the Basilica of San Vicente.
From this moment, and the relationship to town planning, remains the enigma of the orientation of the building, of a mosque facing the south and not towards the south-east, towards Meccaas it was obligatory in Muslim prayer rooms.
This is something that has been studied a lot, but the professor gave the answer: the orientation is not only the mihrab, the area which will now be to the south, but also the qibla wall, “and the wall of qibla “It has greater extension.” Professor Fernando Valdés had said this in another lecture, looking at the time of Alhakén II, who carried out the last expansion towards the south, towards the place where it could no longer grow because there was the Guadalquivir and the river port.
“It was then that the orientation canonical of the Aljama Mosque, it was already said that there was no more discussion,” he said. It was then accepted without problem because the orientation is not entirely to the south. ” It’s about 155 degrees south, but the qibla wall is a development that also goes east,” he summarized.
The work carried out in 2020 aroused the interest of certain global experts in a little-known period
The results of the excavations carried out since 2020, which have produced results with such global impact, will not stop there. The principal investigator, accompanied by Alberto Leonof the Deiure group, assured that in the coming months, and always in agreement with the Cathedral Chapter as owner of the monument, a traveling exhibition will be organized with some of the pieces found as well as with audiovisual material on what is appeared in the Patio de Los Naranjos, and which, in this first phase, focused on the analysis of what the architect had already unearthed in the 20th century. Felix Hernández.
Another interesting point, although in the longer term, is that the XIX International Congress of Cordoba Christian archeologyan event which must take place within five years, and which must share with the international community the results of the work already carried out and those which must begin, which will allow further study of pre-Islamic Córdoba from the research of the Basilica of St. Vincent and the controversy over his location, or even his very existence.
Professor Alberto León defended the candidacy of Córdoba during the last congress, which was held a few weeks ago in Belgrade, and the presence of the great experts international research will make it possible to better disseminate results which, as José Antonio Garriguet explained in his presentation, already raise great expectations.
