Church of Cordoba

I am looking for information regarding the Church of Cordoba in Spain.  I know little about this church, other than that it was originally a Visigoth church, converted to a mosque by muslims, and then reconverted back to a church after the reconquest.  Does anyone have any photos of the interior or exterior of the church or other interesting information?

Amir khan, you should check out wikipedia, and search for "Mezquita". There it says explicitly:

The site was that of the Visigothic cathedral of St. Vincent.

The cathedral was razed with the consent of the local bishop, and then rebuilt as a Mosque. In a sense, the mosque was a church before, and then converted back into a church during Cordoba's reconquest.

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If the church was razed THEN IT WAS NOT converted to a mosque.

 

The Ummayads were very keen to keep the Christian population happy. Therefore it was common practice to pay compensation to the Christians if their site was used. The negotiations between Muslim and Christians were concluded amicably.

This is clearely demonstrated in the first great architecural structure in Islam, The great Ummayad Mosque of Damascus. Here, initially, Muslims and Christias shared the site. Later the Muslims Payed for 4 other churches to be built in Compensation, and the Christians were happy with the agreement(see link below)

http://almashriq.hiof.no/syria/900/910/919/damas/ummayad_mos que/9810/history.html

(I do recall the Cordova site being purchased by Abdul rehman, but I can't find the link yet.)

The Visigothic church was also on the site of a Roman Temple, anyway.

Your views may be analogous to the Hindus who destroyed the 800(!) year old Babri mosque in India a few years ago, because they believed it was the site of an earlier hindu temple. We, in the west believed this to be a barbaric act of destruction.

Originally posted by amir khan The Visigothic church was also on the site of a Roman Temple, anyway.

A temple to whom? It may be interesting to recover the original purpose... you may think it barbaric but destroying a pre-existing temple to build a new one is equally barbaric. There are even churches built on sacred stones... which we can't visit anymore because the chapel is always locked.

Originally posted by R_AK47 Sacred stones?  What sacred stones?

Never mind.

I'm sure you would bring them home and built a mad myth about them.

Originally posted by malizai_ Amir When the church was converted back did they pay a sum for the mosque to be razed? how did that proceed?

Unfortunately no such compensation probably even crossed the mind of Ferdinand the third in 1236, upon his conquest of Cordova.

Such an animosity had been created in the long period of the Reconquista crusades, that  the Christian conquerers simply considered it as reclaiming their birthright, rather then humanistic compensation concerns.All mosques were converted to churches upon conquest.

This is amply illustrated by the fact  that Ferdinand immediately had the Lamps of the mezquita recast as the bells of Santiago de compostela(which they originally were until Almanzor took them).(Act of reclamation)

The mezquita was immediately consecrated as a church, although its form remined intact until the 16th century.

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This is not to say that the people of Cordova were not attached to their Mezquita (as opposed to the Castillian conquerers).

When in the 16th centuary, it was decided to demolish the Mezquita structure and build a new Church, the people protested so much that a compromise was reached by which the present Gothic cathedral arose in the midst of the Classical structure of the Mezquita.

Apparently, even to this day, Cordovans say "they are going to the Mezquita for mass", rather than "they are going to the Cathedral for mass"

Lets hope All the Spanish grow to love the Mezquita as much as the Turks love the Hagia Sofia.