Advances in Research on Islamic Cordoba Alberto León and Juan Fco. Murillo Universidad de Córdoba and Gerencia Municipal de Urbanismo aleonm@uco.es and jmurillo@gmu.cordoba.es © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2014, Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX JIA 1.1 (2014) 5–35 Journal of Islamic Archaeology ISSN (print) 2051-9710 doi: 10.1558/jia.v1i1.5 Journal of Islamic Archaeology ISSN (print) 2051-9729 Keywords: Islamicization, Umayyad dynasty, Almohad Caliphate, process planning, urban topography The capital of the Andalusian Umayyad state has been traditionally studied on the basis of written sources, including chronicles and palatine texts. In the last decades, however, the archaeology of Umayyad Cordoba has experienced substantial growth as a consequence of large-scale municipal development, which has necessitated numerous salvage excava- tions and other archaeological interventions. As a result of these activities and, specif- cally, of joint feldwork by the University of Cordoba and the Municipal Urban Develop- ment Agency, which lasted from 2001 to 2011, it has been possible to study in depth certain aspects of the Islamic city, such as: a) The transition of the city from its late-antique stage, specifcally in the area occupied by the Mosque and the Alcazar after the Islamic Conquest; b) The confguration of the islamicized landscape within the madīna through the analysis of its evolution, from the foundation of munyas and suburban productive spaces to the con- stitution of suburban quarters; c) The defnition and distribution of secondary or “quarter” mosques, baths and maqabirs, product, in many cases, of pious acts through the institution of waqf; d) The characteristics of the suburban quarters, born in the urban growth experi- enced after the proclamation of the Umayyad Caliphate; e) And, fnally, the occupation of the city after the ftna at the beginning of the eleventh century and, particularly, the urban revitalization experienced under the Almohads. Introduction Umayyad Cordoba has traditionally been at the centre of scholarship on the art, history and archaeology of al-Andalus. The city that emerged at the end of the tenth century, with the integration of Cordoba, Madīna al-Zahrā’ and Madīna al-Zāhira, has few equals in the medieval Mediterranean (cf. Garcin 2000). However, most of the approaches been heavily infuenced by the perspective of the written sources, usually palatine chroni- cles with hyperbolic descriptions that emphasize the splendour of the city, tainted by legends of the Andalusian caliphate. For this reason, the caliphate is recalled with nostal- gia all over the Islamic world. The historical focus on the tenth century and a preoccupa- tion with conserved monuments of this period have offered us an incomplete picture of Madīnah Qurṭuba.