Cordoba re-visited

Yesterday's highlight was a bus trip to Estacion Ferrocarril Maria Zambrano, to obtain a tarjeta dorada 40% OAP discount fare card for Clare and to book tickets for today's outing to Cordoba. We made sure to get to bed early last night to be sure of enough sleep before an early start for a day trip to Cordoba. A number three bus from outside the apartment just after eight took us directly to the station, so we were half an hour early for the high speed stopping train journey of 158km, taking just 65 minutes.

We walked from the station down to the Old Town to visit first the Mezquita/Catedral, which I first visited two years ago. This time, the ticket office and entrance queues were much shorter, although the entrance price has done up from €8 to €10. We spent an hour in there, walking right around the vast interior four times before leaving to hunt for a coffee and slice of Millehoja pastel. 

The day had started quite chilly in Cordoba, but the temperate rose in the afternoon to a pleasant 29C, warmer than Malaga in fact. We wandered around the streets in the vicinity of the Mezquita in search of the Jewish quarter. Sadly, the historic mediaeval synagogue is closed for repairs at the moment, but the Sephardi Jewish house across the narrow street from it, was still open to visitors. But first, where to have lunch in this barrio, with such a choice of cuisine available?

We settled for nearby Casa Mazal, specialising in Sephardi dishes. It's set in a quiet courtyard off the street, and offered an unusual range of kosher recipes, using nuts and dried fruit, couscous, fish, meat or vegetarian. We weren't disappointed, rather delighted with our chance discovery.

The Casa Sepharad is a showcase of Jewish culture and history. Sephardi were the original Spanish Jews  from ancient times with their own hybrid language, like Yiddish among the Ashkenazi Jews. Persecution from early on led to them settling all around the Mediterreanean, but in Spain under Arab rule they flourished and played a key part in intellectual life, especially in the origins of Renaissance thought in Spain.

The museum explains all this with engaging clarity, and also tells the stories of the part played by Muslims in protecting Jews from nazi persecution in the 20th century. I found this place during my previous visit to Cordoba, but had no time to do justice to what it presented. I was very glad to have been able to keep this particular promise to myself.

We walked the streets some more, crossed the first century Roman bridge over the rio Guadalquivir to see the Old Town from a different perspective, then slowly headed back towards the train station for the journey home, as tiredness set in from so much walking. By half past eight we were back at the apartment again, having supper and thinking about early bed-time yet again. So glad to have had the opportunity to share with Clare this remarkable unique city, once the capital of El Andalus, and now a World Heritage Site magnet for global tourism. You can see my photos here.

  

Post Cordoba reflections

Sunday morning, Bible Sunday, was my last visit to Calahonda to celebrate the Eucharist. Having gone to bed early, to optimise the advantage of the clocks going back an hour, I woke up well before the alarm, and even left the house twenty minutes early. Once I'd parked the car outside the church I realised that I had enough time to take a stroll down to the sea shore. It means crossing the N340 road bridge and heading through a street with a series of beach front exclusive residences, until I found a narrow lane alongside a stream which took me down to the water's edge. I was rewarded with a fleeting glimpse of a yellow wagtail, and a view of the sun over the waters, a little higher than usual at this time of morning. 

After a moment of quiet and a little Chi Gung exercise on the sand, I returned to the church, and entered at the usual time, to get ready for the service with a congregation of just over thirty. After taking my leave of those unlikely to come to next Sunday's 'bring 'n share' lunch at St Andrews, I drove back to Los Boliches where there was a congregation of forty five surrounded by the flower festival exhibits from the previous two days, still looking good. It was a successful venture, attracting around seventy visitors and receiving nearly four hundred euros in donations.

Apart from food shopping, and a brief visit to the church office in the afternoon the only thing I did all day was write up the Cordoba trip, which involved researching historical detail I'd deliberately avoided looking up before I went. As with other sacred sites in Spain, if not across Europe, a Roman temple site had been built over in the fifth century by Christians, in this case Visigothic invaders from Germany, then taken over by muslims, then re-taken by Christians. Such sites were strategic places in the power politics of each age, and religion a major dimension of this. But what of now?

Cordoba's mosque/cathedral is a UN World Heritage Site, in a European Community country, a venue for international tourism, a manifestation of 20th century globalisation of culture and its consumption. World trade has become an accepted if sometimes contentious feature of human existence. The work of the United Nations and all its specialised agencies, just like the European Community can be regarded as an interim step on a long agonising journey towards unified world governance. This goal is resisted by many who remain stuck with their ethnocentric political and economic self interest. If globalising impulses really did bring peace, prosperity, justice and security to all earth's citizens, it would signal an evolutionary step change for humankind. As long as the world remains so deeply divided between rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless, however, such reconciling enterprises are no more than glimpses of a distant utopia beyond reach.

I wonder if threats to places and things accorded World Heritage status from climate change, pollution, environmental damage, population explosion, or war will be enough of an extra stimulus to world citizens to make a difference in the challenge facing this generation to deal with so many critical issues facing our future?

Cordoba visit

I took the Cercania train to the Maria Zambrano Station this morning to travel on the 11.05 AVE high speed train to Cordoba. It was a lovely experience. The carriages are spacious, the seats comfortable, and I had a window place in both directions, though taking photographs at 120mph was a challenge. Once the train has gone through the mountains up behind the Guadalhorce Valley, it travels across a wide gently rolling plain, fringed with distant hills. Now it's autumn, the arable crops are harvested and this exposes different colours of soil, dark red, black, yellow, chalky white, along a train route which also overlooks citrous and olive groves as far as the eye can see, and only the occasional white village adorning an escarpment. It's a reminder of how big Spain is and how dispersed its settlements.

Cordoba station is a modern building, such as befits the new era of rail trasportation on the main line from Malaga to Madrid. Connections can be made here to travel to west Sevilla, and north east to Barcelona. This is where I'll have to change trains next Monday for my seven hour journey to Vinaros, on the TALGO Mediterraneo. So, I checked out the platform change required, so that I can mentlly rehearse the journey in the week ahead. 

The walk down to the mediaeval town centre took me down an avenue with a wide strip of park and garden in between the roadways took me half an hour. The western section of the ancient town wall and gateways survives, and encloses an area of narrow rambling streets full of bars, restaurants and tourist shops, crowded with visitors. I made my way directly to the Cathedral, former mosque, which has attracted UN World Heritge status for its unque beauty and architecture. The huge courtyard is dominated by a huge high bell tower now hung with church bells, built around the core that was once the mosque minaret.

 There was a 120 yard queue of people waiting to enter, having paid eight euros first for the privelege at a courtyard ticket booth. I only waited 10-15 minutes to get in, and there was lots to photograph meanwhile. There were hundreds of people from all over the world inside, some in organised groups with a guide, families, couples, individuals, most with cameras like me, taking pictures.

The building started its life in the late fifth century as church of the Visigoths, Germanic colonisers of Spain after the fall of the Roman Empire, who adhered initially to Arian Christianity, but hereabouts converted to the orthodox Latin Christianity. The first church, dedicated to St Vincent was built on the site of a Roman temple of Janus. After the muslim conquest of Spain, the building was shared between them, then replaced and extended, reaching its present dimensions in 987, at 180 x 13 metres it is one of the largest islamic prayer halls ever built in the world. Following the fall of the city to Christian forces in 1236, the mosque was converted for use as a church with the addition of several chapels. In 1523, the central section of the mosque was gutted. A renaissance choir and sanctuary was raised to give it the full dignity of a cathedral for the diocese of Cordoba, an architectural imposition commented upon unfavourably at the time.

The simple beauty of the islamic prayer hall with its nineteen naves, each 130 metres long, is impressive. It uses many high value kinds of stone in its columns, and similar designs of arch construction from different periods of expansion with characteristic chequered arches, made of red brick and white limestone. Many costly kinds of stone are used in the supporting columns. Some of them were originally part of the temple of Janus.

On this first visit, I didn't delve into the building's history. I wanted to form an impression of the whole. I took many pictures and watched the crowds of people ebb and flow for an hour of walking around. 1.5 million visitors a year, they reckon, not counting people who come here to worship. In the south east corner chapel, a wedding was going on. It's still an active diocesan place of worship out of visitor hours.. How that's managed in reality is hard to imagine. There are dozens of chapels set into the walls of the building, and some altars in some of the naves. When, if ever they are used, is an open question. I couldn't find a Sacrament chapel - too many places to look. Nor a place to light a candle. The highly ornate south facing mihrab, focal point of muslim prayer, is impressive and seems to invite those who gather before it to gaze quietly.

In many ways, the extensive aisles of columns and hosts of visitors milling around reminded me of an unusual palace, a house of culture rather than a place of worship sacred to two faiths. There were several areas where historical artifacts were displayed in museum cabinets, and one nave on the east side contained a contemporary guide to prominent saints, related to their statues, in a kind of secular catechesis. 

The only shared focuses of activity, taking photos and consuming great historic culture, are both quite subjective in their way. Visitors were subdued, well behaved enough for the security guards to have little to do. Apart from its extraordinary beauty and general quietness, there was no much of what I would regard as a numinous or spiritual atmosphere to the place. Perhaps it's different when it's largely empty, or during a time of worship, than introduces a common focus and intent to the place, fulfilling its purpose. The most visible concession to modernity is the presence of TV screens in the vicinity of the renaissance choir and sanctuary, each discreetly covered with a red dust cover. Does being able to see what's going on at the altar make that much difference.

Afterwards, I walked down to the edge of the old town, where the Guadalquivir river flows, and made my way along its promenade to the place where there's a river bridge from Roman times, with a fortified tower at the far side and a triumphal arch from Renaissance times on the town side, next to a modern Visitor Centre that preserves sections of the old Roman town walls beneath it. Just one street away are the southern and western walls of the mosque. 

I then made my way through side streets into the 'Judia', the Jewish quarter, made famous by the lives and teachings of Jewish phlosophers Mamionides and Averroes. There's a small fourteenth century synagogue here. Under muslim rule there was a place, a strictly regulated place, for Christians and Jews to live alongside. After the reconquista of 1492, the Jews were expelled and the synagogue was turned into a chapel. Thankfully this building is now under the care of the ajuntamiento and has been restored. 

It's decorated with fine patterns and Hebrew scripture quotations carved out of stone. Some of it has suffered the ravages of time, though not all, and the collective mind applied as been able to make all texts identifiable for the benfit of those who visit now. I found this small cube of a simply room, empty of all furnishings save for its carved walls, breathed spiritual atmosphere. I stood and said the 'shemah' (in English) to honour the centuries of gifted thinkers and workers in a community whose origins may be hidden in pre-Christian Jewish disapora.

Across the street from the synagogue is a house which has been converted into a museum of Sephardi Judaism, that rich uniquely Spanish cultural expression of Hebrew religion. I didn't have enough time to take the guided tour, with my train timetable in mind, but chatted with the guide for a few moments before leaving. There was a lovely hospitable spirit about this place, and as I stepped out into the street I found myself moved to tears, touched by something deep down that I was hardly conscious of. What it is I don't know, but here I felt more like a pilgrim than I did in the holiest shrine of the kingdom of al-Andalus.

On my walk back to the station I discovered a huge nineteenth century greenhouse type building of iron and glass in the park garden between the road carriageways. The Mercado Victoria seems to have been some kind of public meeting place in times past, but has been renovated and converted into a market place of small bars and gourmet restaurants celebrating Andalusian food, a very classy undertaking. Not enough time to stop and partake. I was even to busy absorbing the enviornment to stop for lunch, only a beer, at a place with a live guitarist entertaining open air diners.

The train journeys went smoothly, and a was back at home by seven, pondering on all I'd seen and reviewing the photos taken, juggling with two cameras to see which would perform best in the unusual lighting conditions prevailing inside the mosque cathedral. A memorable day. I'm determined to return for longer next time. More photos of the day are to be found here