Most Beautiful Mihrab, The

A thousand years ago Islam was the predominant religion across territory stretching from Spain and North Africa in the west to the borders of China in the east. In the tenth century there were three caliphates: the Umayyads of Spain, the Fatimids of Egypt and the Abbasids of Iraq.

The tenth century was a golden age for Cordoba, which became the most important center of learning in the Islamic West.

The Story

The caliphs of Cordoba frequently had friendly relations with Orthodox Christian Byzantium at the opposite end of the Mediterranean. As the wealth of the Spanish Umayyads increased, their Great Mosque was expanded and made more beautiful — and for the mihrab, the caliph turned to the emperor in Constantinople.

What came of that exchange is the subject of this book, and it is a true story rather than a legend.

Why It Is Worth Telling a Child

Because it complicates a picture children absorb early: that Muslims and Christians in that era were simply enemies. Here a caliph and an emperor of different faiths cooperated on a work of religious art, and the result stood for a thousand years.

That is history rather than a moral, and it is more interesting than either side of the caricature.

Related Reading

• Book of Ibns — the same civilization, through the people who built it
• Atlas of the Islamic Conquests — how Islam reached Spain, mapped in color
• Science and Technology in Islamic History — the learning that Cordoba was famous for