Conferences and debates
Index / Activities / Conferences and debates / Unveiling the Archaeological Cordoba: Qurtuba
Unveiling the Archaeological Cordoba: Qurtuba
From March 20, 2012 until December 13, 2012
The first December lecture was on the al-munyas of the Umayyad Cordoba.In the framework of the citizen program We are All Archaeology, Casa Árabe and the Sisyphus Research Group of the Department of Archaeology (University of Cordoba) organize the speech season "Unveiling the Archaeological Cordoba: Qurtuba". The al-munyas are big palace-like buildings located on the outskirts of the city, they have plenty of gardens and vegetable patches. In this case, they are a special landmark of the landscape of the outskirts of the emiral and caliphal Cordoba. Constantly mentioned on the texts of that period, they served to host embassies sent to the capital, or celebrations circle of friends close to the caliph or even massive parades. Fernando López Cuevas described during his lecture the different al-munyas quoted in those medieval chronicles, from which the archaeological work has also given great proof of. He aimed to offer a global idea and to bring up new questions which arise related to the topic.
Fernando López Cuevas is a young archaeologist who has been taught in Spain and abroad and who has paid a special attention to the Islamic Cordoba. For the last years he has focused his studies on it, gaining archaeological experience both in the private sector (Arqueoqurtuba) as in the public one (The Agreemente GMU-UCO, Madīnat al-Zahrā’). His master thesis, “The al-munyas from Madinat Qurtuba. Preliminary approach and new stances”, has been the preamble of an ambitious Ph.D. thesis which he has recently started and which will include further research on Cordoba’s al-munyas and the Umayyad landscape.
This season is aimed to make population closer to the city’s Arab-Islamic archaeological patrimony, because experts are conscious that if the people becomes aware and understands what Archaeology means, they will learn to respect it and, therefore, they will take care and defend it.
All the events will take place at 19.30 in Casa Árabe’s headquarters in Cordoba. Free entrance.
The season began on Thursday April 19th with the tribune "Caliphal Power Symbols". Archaeologist Alberto Montejo, known for his work related to Cordoba’s city planning archaeology, offered a study on the iconographic motifs used by the Cordoban Umayyad Caliphate to establish its power, strengthening particularly its Orient origins.
On May 9th two speeches were given by archaeologists Belén Vázquez and Rafael Clapés.
The bath or hammam was one of the most representative elements of the Islamic culture in general, and of that of al-Andalus in particular. Belén Vázquez explained on the first speech the general aspects of these elements which were aimed to purify body and soul, which also became meeting and recreation places. These areas gather pure devotion, hygiene field and, sometimes, sumptuous architecture. Afterwards, Rafael Clapés exposed the relevance of a well documented private bath in Cordoba and al-Andalus. The example is part of a big house which arose during the excavations on the western suburbs of Qurtuba.
Belén Vázquez
She has worked in the city planning archaeological department of Cordoba within the frame of an Agreement between the Local Urban Managing Department of Cordoba and the University of Cordoba. Currently she is a researcher by the University of Cordoba (Sisyphus Research Group) and she is dealing with a Ph. D. thesis on water management at the Madinat Qurtuba, specially focusing on the caliphal suburbs which expanded to the West of the Madinat.
Rafael Clapés
He has spent a long time of his career at Arqueoqurtuba, a company for which he has taken part and directed different excavations carried out in Cordoba, specially in the western Islamic suburbs.
On Thursday 7th June, the archaeologist Cristina Camacho was in charge of the speech "A model of a palace house in Qurtuba"
The appointment in September was the lecture “Small mosques in Qurtuba”, by the archaeologist Carmen González.
Mosques are the most obvious material reflection of the Islamic civilization, apart from a clear territorial evidence of its presence. They are also the basis of the daily life for the inhabitants of those cities dominated by the Islam. Nevertheless, an in Cordoba’s particular case, researchers have not paid attention to second-rank mosques, because they have focused their studies and analysis on the Great Mosque. This lecture aims to show roughly those small mosques in Cordoba, and to analyze in an overview the important part they played for the configuration and the development of life of the Madinat Qurtuba.
Carmen González
She carries out her research activity within the Sisyphus Research Group (Department of Archaeology of the University of Cordoba), from which she is part of since 2009. Currently she is writing her Ph. D. thesis on the mosques of the Madinat Qurtuba neighbourhood, focusing on the role those buildings played in the urban development of the city.
The first appointment of October was about surgery and ophthalmology in Cordoba and Professor Carlos Pera focused his speech on the profiles of two important practitioners: Albucasis and Al-Gafiqi. The original contributions of the first one related to the surgery field and to the graphical representation in his codex of different medical tools still undiscovered in the archaeological area of expertise. On the other hand, European practitioners did not beat Al-Gafiqi’s work in the whole Middle Age and his name is popularly related to the word spectacles in Spanish ("gafas").
Carlos Pera, Surgery chair professor at the University of Cordoba from 1976 to 2005, and currently Emerito Professor, has published three hundred twenty eight medical publications, more than half of them in Anglo-Saxon magazines, and has also been Chairman of the Andalusian Society of Surgery. He is deeply interested on al-Andalus Medicine; he is member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Seville, from the National one and from the one in Granada. He was granted the Virgili Prize by the Catalan Society of Surgery and he is member of various international surgery associations, holding as well posts within their structures.
On October 25th, Alberto León, professor of Archaeology by the University of Cordoba, gave a speech on the fortification in medieval Cordoba.
Fortifications have been a secular element on the medieval urban scenery of Cordoba. Apart from the walls inherited from the roman and late antique city, during the Andalusi period there were new defensive enclosed areas aimed not only to defend its inhabitants, but also to praise the image of the ruling dynasties. In the conference, Mr. León would cover through some of the main defensive landmarks which synthesize the city evolution and which still are pieces to identify its historical image.
Alberto León Muñoz is member of the Sisyphus Research Group and professor at the Archaeology Department of the University of Cordoba, where he has been a pioneer on archaeological medieval city study. Since he started being a researcher he has focused on medieval fortifications and Cordoba’s medieval city planning. He has intensively worked on this subject, from Late Antiquity to Christian late medieval, paying special attention to the Islamic phases. Currently he has several national and international publications on the subject, and he is the director of some research works and of a Ph. D. thesis on city planning and materials in Qurtuba and al-Andalus.
On November 15th, José Diz gave a lecture on Mathematics in al-Andalus. He exposed some of the questions which captured most of the attention of the scientists from the 8th to the 14th centuries in the region of al-Andalus, and he linked those to the advances which took place in the East. Although it may be opposed to the common place of Medieval Era as a science wasteland, scientist activity of figures such as Maslama the Madrilian, al-Mutaman from Zaragoza, the Muslim judge Ibn-Mu'ad from Jaen or the astronomer and mathematician Azarquiel, proof the prejudices to be wrong.
José Diz is an agronomist engineer and has worked for the University of Cordoba as associate professor of the Department of Mathematics and, later on for the Statistics one. Since 2002, he is professor at the University School at the Sciences Faculty of the University of Cordoba. He has contributed in different research projects, all of them related to Statistics and experimental designs, he has also taken part in congresses on these topics and on teaching Statistics, and he is co-author in different publications, text books and exercises related to his expertise field.
The last speech of the season was on November 29th and it was titled Official Protocol of the Caliphs of Cordoba, by professor Fernando Valdés. He talked about the intense relations the Caliphate of Cordoba held with other contemporary States from the East and from Central Europe. These contacts were established through embassies ruled by a rigid protocol which enable to get to know Europe’s Byzantine cultural influences and, specially, the one al-Andalus got. For instance, the embassy deployed to that Cordoba of Abd al-Rahman III by whom with the time became Emperor Oton I, from year 954 to 956. This testimony has been narrated by the head of the embassy, monk Juan de Gorce, and therefore enables to get to know the circumstances around those international relations between the political powers of the medieval Europe in the 10th century.
Fernando Valdés is a Professor of Islamic Archaeology by the Autonomous University of Madrid. He is considered one of the most conspicuous figures of Spanish medieval archaeology and has quite an international prestige. He has been guest lecturer in different European universities such as the Sorbonne, Bamberg, Berlin, and so on. He is a expert on the Middle East and North Africa medieval world, on which he has developed several research projects, and he is author and coordinator of several monographic projects as well as international articles on quite diverse areas regarding the medieval material preservation: Andalusi town planning, fortifications, ceramics, architectural decoration, glass, ivory, and so on. Nowadays, he is director of the archaeological research works of the city of Badajoz and, particularly focused on those of the citadel.
The first lecture in December was on the 5th, Al-munyas of the Umayyad Cordoba, by Fernando López Cuevas.
The al-munyas are big palace-like buildings located on the outskirts of the city, they have plenty of gardens and vegetable patches. In this case, they are a special landmark of the landscape of the outskirts of the emiral and caliphal Cordoba. Constantly mentioned on the texts of that period, they served to host embassies sent to the capital, or celebrations circle of friends close to the caliph or even massive parades. Fernando López Cuevas described during his lecture the different al-munyas quoted in those medieval chronicles, from which the archaeological work has also given great proof of. He aimed to offer a global idea and to bring up new questions which arise related to the topic.
Fernando López Cuevas is a young archaeologist who has been taught in Spain and abroad and who has paid a special attention to the Islamic Cordoba. For the last years he has focused his studies on it, gaining archaeological experience both in the private sector (Arqueoqurtuba) as in the public one (The Agreemente GMU-UCO, Madīnat al-Zahrā’). His master thesis, ‘The al-munyas from Madinat Qurtuba. Preliminary approach and new stances’, has been the preamble of an ambitious Ph.D. thesis which he has recently started and which will include further research on Cordoba’s al-munyas and the Umayyad landscape.
On Thursday December 13th, this season began with the lecture of the archaeologist Rafael Blanco: Housing in Islamic Cordoba.
Housing architecture was the largest urban element and it determined the evolution and transformation of Andalusian medina. It was also a true reflect of the city’s inhabitants, of their religious, social and economic idiosyncrasy. The lecture offered the opportunity to access the real Cordoban Andalusian house through archaeological traces found on houses, exhumed on those urban diggings carried out in the last years. Finally, it enabled to get closer to the intimacy of those nameless citizens of Qurtuba, generally ignored by chronicles, but which, nevertheless, were the bulk of the population.
Rafael Blanco is a member of the Sisyphus Research Group of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cordoba and coordinates the project We are All Archeaology. For the last years he has taken part in diverse archaeological sites and research projects on Cordoba, focusing on the Islamic period. He has published several works on the housing architecture and Andalusian urbanism, which have been exposed in several national and international scientific congresses.
This season is aimed to make population closer to the city’s Arab-Islamic archaeological patrimony, because experts are conscious that if the people becomes aware and understands what Archaeology means, they will learn to respect it and, therefore, they will take care and defend it.
All the events will take place at 19.30 in Casa Árabe’s headquarters in Cordoba. Free entrance.
PAST LECTURES
"Caliphal power symbols"
The season began on Thursday April 19th with the tribune "Caliphal Power Symbols". Archaeologist Alberto Montejo, known for his work related to Cordoba’s city planning archaeology, offered a study on the iconographic motifs used by the Cordoban Umayyad Caliphate to establish its power, strengthening particularly its Orient origins.
“Bath and hygiene in al-Andalus” and “A private bath in the western suburbs”
On May 9th two speeches were given by archaeologists Belén Vázquez and Rafael Clapés.
The bath or hammam was one of the most representative elements of the Islamic culture in general, and of that of al-Andalus in particular. Belén Vázquez explained on the first speech the general aspects of these elements which were aimed to purify body and soul, which also became meeting and recreation places. These areas gather pure devotion, hygiene field and, sometimes, sumptuous architecture. Afterwards, Rafael Clapés exposed the relevance of a well documented private bath in Cordoba and al-Andalus. The example is part of a big house which arose during the excavations on the western suburbs of Qurtuba.
Belén Vázquez
She has worked in the city planning archaeological department of Cordoba within the frame of an Agreement between the Local Urban Managing Department of Cordoba and the University of Cordoba. Currently she is a researcher by the University of Cordoba (Sisyphus Research Group) and she is dealing with a Ph. D. thesis on water management at the Madinat Qurtuba, specially focusing on the caliphal suburbs which expanded to the West of the Madinat.
Rafael Clapés
He has spent a long time of his career at Arqueoqurtuba, a company for which he has taken part and directed different excavations carried out in Cordoba, specially in the western Islamic suburbs.
"A model of a palace house in Qurtuba"
On Thursday 7th June, the archaeologist Cristina Camacho was in charge of the speech "A model of a palace house in Qurtuba"
“Small mosques in Qurtuba”
The appointment in September was the lecture “Small mosques in Qurtuba”, by the archaeologist Carmen González.
Mosques are the most obvious material reflection of the Islamic civilization, apart from a clear territorial evidence of its presence. They are also the basis of the daily life for the inhabitants of those cities dominated by the Islam. Nevertheless, an in Cordoba’s particular case, researchers have not paid attention to second-rank mosques, because they have focused their studies and analysis on the Great Mosque. This lecture aims to show roughly those small mosques in Cordoba, and to analyze in an overview the important part they played for the configuration and the development of life of the Madinat Qurtuba.
Carmen González
She carries out her research activity within the Sisyphus Research Group (Department of Archaeology of the University of Cordoba), from which she is part of since 2009. Currently she is writing her Ph. D. thesis on the mosques of the Madinat Qurtuba neighbourhood, focusing on the role those buildings played in the urban development of the city.
Surgery and Ophthalmology in Cordoba from 10th to 12th Centuries
The first appointment of October was about surgery and ophthalmology in Cordoba and Professor Carlos Pera focused his speech on the profiles of two important practitioners: Albucasis and Al-Gafiqi. The original contributions of the first one related to the surgery field and to the graphical representation in his codex of different medical tools still undiscovered in the archaeological area of expertise. On the other hand, European practitioners did not beat Al-Gafiqi’s work in the whole Middle Age and his name is popularly related to the word spectacles in Spanish ("gafas").
Carlos Pera, Surgery chair professor at the University of Cordoba from 1976 to 2005, and currently Emerito Professor, has published three hundred twenty eight medical publications, more than half of them in Anglo-Saxon magazines, and has also been Chairman of the Andalusian Society of Surgery. He is deeply interested on al-Andalus Medicine; he is member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Seville, from the National one and from the one in Granada. He was granted the Virgili Prize by the Catalan Society of Surgery and he is member of various international surgery associations, holding as well posts within their structures.
Fortifications in the medieval Cordoba
On October 25th, Alberto León, professor of Archaeology by the University of Cordoba, gave a speech on the fortification in medieval Cordoba.
Fortifications have been a secular element on the medieval urban scenery of Cordoba. Apart from the walls inherited from the roman and late antique city, during the Andalusi period there were new defensive enclosed areas aimed not only to defend its inhabitants, but also to praise the image of the ruling dynasties. In the conference, Mr. León would cover through some of the main defensive landmarks which synthesize the city evolution and which still are pieces to identify its historical image.
Alberto León Muñoz is member of the Sisyphus Research Group and professor at the Archaeology Department of the University of Cordoba, where he has been a pioneer on archaeological medieval city study. Since he started being a researcher he has focused on medieval fortifications and Cordoba’s medieval city planning. He has intensively worked on this subject, from Late Antiquity to Christian late medieval, paying special attention to the Islamic phases. Currently he has several national and international publications on the subject, and he is the director of some research works and of a Ph. D. thesis on city planning and materials in Qurtuba and al-Andalus.
Mathematics in al-Andalus
On November 15th, José Diz gave a lecture on Mathematics in al-Andalus. He exposed some of the questions which captured most of the attention of the scientists from the 8th to the 14th centuries in the region of al-Andalus, and he linked those to the advances which took place in the East. Although it may be opposed to the common place of Medieval Era as a science wasteland, scientist activity of figures such as Maslama the Madrilian, al-Mutaman from Zaragoza, the Muslim judge Ibn-Mu'ad from Jaen or the astronomer and mathematician Azarquiel, proof the prejudices to be wrong.
José Diz is an agronomist engineer and has worked for the University of Cordoba as associate professor of the Department of Mathematics and, later on for the Statistics one. Since 2002, he is professor at the University School at the Sciences Faculty of the University of Cordoba. He has contributed in different research projects, all of them related to Statistics and experimental designs, he has also taken part in congresses on these topics and on teaching Statistics, and he is co-author in different publications, text books and exercises related to his expertise field.
Official Protocol of the Caliphs of Cordoba
The last speech of the season was on November 29th and it was titled Official Protocol of the Caliphs of Cordoba, by professor Fernando Valdés. He talked about the intense relations the Caliphate of Cordoba held with other contemporary States from the East and from Central Europe. These contacts were established through embassies ruled by a rigid protocol which enable to get to know Europe’s Byzantine cultural influences and, specially, the one al-Andalus got. For instance, the embassy deployed to that Cordoba of Abd al-Rahman III by whom with the time became Emperor Oton I, from year 954 to 956. This testimony has been narrated by the head of the embassy, monk Juan de Gorce, and therefore enables to get to know the circumstances around those international relations between the political powers of the medieval Europe in the 10th century.
Fernando Valdés is a Professor of Islamic Archaeology by the Autonomous University of Madrid. He is considered one of the most conspicuous figures of Spanish medieval archaeology and has quite an international prestige. He has been guest lecturer in different European universities such as the Sorbonne, Bamberg, Berlin, and so on. He is a expert on the Middle East and North Africa medieval world, on which he has developed several research projects, and he is author and coordinator of several monographic projects as well as international articles on quite diverse areas regarding the medieval material preservation: Andalusi town planning, fortifications, ceramics, architectural decoration, glass, ivory, and so on. Nowadays, he is director of the archaeological research works of the city of Badajoz and, particularly focused on those of the citadel.
Al-munyas of the Umayyad Cordoba
The first lecture in December was on the 5th, Al-munyas of the Umayyad Cordoba, by Fernando López Cuevas.
The al-munyas are big palace-like buildings located on the outskirts of the city, they have plenty of gardens and vegetable patches. In this case, they are a special landmark of the landscape of the outskirts of the emiral and caliphal Cordoba. Constantly mentioned on the texts of that period, they served to host embassies sent to the capital, or celebrations circle of friends close to the caliph or even massive parades. Fernando López Cuevas described during his lecture the different al-munyas quoted in those medieval chronicles, from which the archaeological work has also given great proof of. He aimed to offer a global idea and to bring up new questions which arise related to the topic.
Fernando López Cuevas is a young archaeologist who has been taught in Spain and abroad and who has paid a special attention to the Islamic Cordoba. For the last years he has focused his studies on it, gaining archaeological experience both in the private sector (Arqueoqurtuba) as in the public one (The Agreemente GMU-UCO, Madīnat al-Zahrā’). His master thesis, ‘The al-munyas from Madinat Qurtuba. Preliminary approach and new stances’, has been the preamble of an ambitious Ph.D. thesis which he has recently started and which will include further research on Cordoba’s al-munyas and the Umayyad landscape.
Housing in Islamic Cordoba
On Thursday December 13th, this season began with the lecture of the archaeologist Rafael Blanco: Housing in Islamic Cordoba.
Housing architecture was the largest urban element and it determined the evolution and transformation of Andalusian medina. It was also a true reflect of the city’s inhabitants, of their religious, social and economic idiosyncrasy. The lecture offered the opportunity to access the real Cordoban Andalusian house through archaeological traces found on houses, exhumed on those urban diggings carried out in the last years. Finally, it enabled to get closer to the intimacy of those nameless citizens of Qurtuba, generally ignored by chronicles, but which, nevertheless, were the bulk of the population.
Rafael Blanco is a member of the Sisyphus Research Group of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cordoba and coordinates the project We are All Archeaology. For the last years he has taken part in diverse archaeological sites and research projects on Cordoba, focusing on the Islamic period. He has published several works on the housing architecture and Andalusian urbanism, which have been exposed in several national and international scientific congresses.
