of its kind in any of the Muslim lands, and it
was renowned for its great beauty. The mosque’s
design recalled that of Umayyad mosques in Syria
to the extent that even its prayer niche (mihrab)
faced south rather than southwest, the actual
direction of mecca. When it was later captured by
the Christians, they built a Gothic cathedral and
several chapels within its walls, thus symbolizing
the religious and political displacement of Islam
by Christianity.
Cordoba’s first Muslim rulers built the Alcazar,
the main government palace, next to the grand
mosque, following the urban palace-mosque pat-
tern used in cities of the Islamicate Middle East.
When Christian forces captured Cordoba in 1236,
they occupied the Alcazar and later built a royal
palace and church on its grounds. This was where
Christopher Columbus came to get permission
to sail to the Indies in 1492. Muslim rulers
also erected luxurious palaces and palace cities
on the city’s outskirts. The most legendary of
these was Abd al-Rahman III’s Madinat al-Zahra,
which boasted exquisite arabesqUe ornamentation
and paradisiacal gardens. Unfortunately, it was
destroyed by rebellious berber troops in 1013.
As a center of learning, Cordoba had dozens
of Muslim and Christian schools. It also had as
many as 70 libraries, including the famous Alca-
zar library of the caliphs, which housed 400,000
books—substantially more than any other library
in Europe in the 11th century. Among Cordoba’s
great creative artists and thinkers were poets such
as Ibn Abd Rabbihi (d. 940) and Ibn Zaydun (d.
1071), jurist and religious scholar ibn hazm (d.
1064), and ibn rUshd (also known by his Latin
name Averroës, d. 1198), the famed Muslim
author of books on philosophy, theology, law,
and medicine. Cordoba was also the birthplace of
Maimonides (also known as Moshe ben Maimun,
d. 1204), who became the most important Jewish
philosopher and religious scholar of the Middle
Ages.
See also christianity and islam; cities; Umayyad
caliphate.
Further reading: Robert Hillenbrand, “ ‘Ornament of
the World’: Medieval Cordoba as a Cultural Centre,”
in The Legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. Salma Khadra
Jayyusi. 2 vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994), 1:112–135;
Maria Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How
Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of
Tolerance in Medieval Spain (New York: Little, Brown,
2002).cosmology See creation.
Council on American-Islamic
Relations (Acronym: CAIR)
CAIR is the largest Islamic civil liberties group in
the United states. It is headquartered in Wash-
ington, D.C., and has 28 regional offices in the
United States and Canada. It was founded in June
1994 by Omar Ahmad, a computer engineer from
the San Francisco Bay area. He is currently the
chairman of its board of directors, which has six
other members to promote a positive image of
Islam and Muslims in America. CAIR publishes
reports for the media, government, and local law
enforcement, including an annual civil rights
report documenting cases of discrimination.
Handbooks for local Muslim leaders demonstrate
how to safely participate in the public sphere
by holding mosqUe open houses and developing
interfaith relationships. In addition to monitoring
anti-Muslim hate crimes, CAIR publishes action
alerts on its Web site and by e-mail to promote
local activism.
On the national level, CAIR has sponsored
public relations campaigns showing Muslims as
fully American as well as organizing a voter reg-
istration drive. To help educate Americans about
Islam, CAIR has also assembled a package of
books and other resource materials that can be
purchased and donated to public libraries. It also
publishes a handbook that explains Islam to law
enforcement officials, a “community safety kit”
to help Muslims deal with religious and ethnicK (^168) cosmology