Doing works in a city like Córdoba is a risk task. From time to time, in Spanish cities we find new vestiges of previous eras. An example is the ruins under the door of the sun or the Otero orchard deposit in Mérida. Córdoba is another level and, during preventive excavations under the layout of a future and important road, they have found new Christian ruins.
They are not just a few more archaeological remains: this finding provides unique context to the coexistence between Christians and Muslims in Islamic Cordoba.
Short. The northern round of Córdoba will be the road that It will close The city ring. It is a complex project that has been carried out in phases and that has been controversial Due to neighborhood complaints motivated by noise that will generate the increase in traffic. During preventive excavations, and how we read in Cordopolisthey found something that will further delay the project: a set of structures that date back to the seventh century.
And the date is relevant because it would contribute new context to the Córdoba of those first decades of Islamic domination.
By layers. Córdoba is a large city, but the Islamic Córdoba was even greater. With the passing of the centuries, the city was diminishing due to the new urban projects, which were building on the remains of the past. Mosque itself is an example of that construction in phases and, although in an exaggerated way, of that building on the above.
When it is excavated to do works, it is not uncommon to run with remains of Islamic neighborhoods, but the interesting thing about this new finding is the cult difference: the Christian. A cult that, due to the progressive Islamization from the city, he left displacing towards the most peripheral areas.
The remains. In Cordopolis, Alberto León, professor of archeology at the University of Córdoba, comments that there was a record of the destruction of Christian temples at the dawn of the seventh century. Subsequently, Abderramán’s “pact” was allowed, allowing the coexistence of the cults. The problem is that no remains of those constructions made by the Mozarabic.
That is why the complex discovered under the future North round Be so relevant. Presents Tapial walls (clayey earth compacted with blows) and a pool of about 50 meters. Archaeologists have been inspecting the place since the end of last year, and it is now when they point out that it would be a monastic building, probably divided into areas for men and women, with clarifying columns arranged, as you can see in the photosaround a patio and that the pool could be a baptistery.
The lost basilica. Ángel Ventura is a professor at the University of Córdoba and one of those who is inspecting this monastic complex. In Córdoba newspaper He launched the hypothesis that the ruins could belong to a possible basilica in honor of Santa Eulalia de Mérida. It was a martyr that had great importance for the Cult in the city And there were documents that implied the existence of “their” basilica, but without having been found.
Clue. In the end, this discovery will allow to have more context about the coexistence between Christians and Muslims, but it is also relevant because, according to Alberto León, “is one of the two examples of existence of a Christian cult complex in Islamic neighborhoods.” The researchers continue to study the place to determine their function, chronology, when it was abandoned and launch hypothesis about the coexistence between the different cultures of the city.
What is clear is that there had to be many more like this in the suburbs, so future excavations could even show more context about that peculiar era of religious coexistence in the Islamic Córdoba. And also that it would be necessary delay or even rethink the work of the road to be able to study this important finding.
Image | Toni Castillo Quero, Dolores Mª Macías Naranjo
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