The Road from Santiago

  We are going to the Mezquita-Catedral de Cordoba. It is glorious and I don’t think I can do it justice.  I will try.  First, some History. https://mezquita-catedraldecordoba.es/en/ According to tradition - the citation needed of the antiquarian world - a Visigoth church occupied this site, In 785 Abd al-Rahman I ordered the building of a mosque. It was expanded several times over the next few centuries.  A minaret was completed in 958. It had a base measuring 8.5 metres and was 47 metres high. A lot happened. If you want details read this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosque%E2%80%93Cathedral_of_C%C3%B3rdoba In 1236 Cordoba fell to Ferdinand III and the Mosque was converted into a cathedral.  According to Jimenez de Rada, the king took the cathedral bells of Santiago, which had been looted by Al-Mansur, back to Santiago.  Here we get what is stunning about the Mosque.  Here we have a first of pillars. The use of this architecture style, which gifted...

  Many things have changed in my lifetime.  Understanding of autism were dramatically different between when I started teaching and when it ended. Smugglers have turned from honest citizens fighting ’the man’ to proto-capitalism and Islam has happened. I am trying to think of the images of Islam that percolated through my childhood. Obviously the Crusaders were the good guys but the locals were not really baddies and could be Saladin like chivalrous opponents.   We did nothing but Christianity in RE.  Arabs were Arabs, very rich but not really Islamic. Then the Iranian Revolution happened. All the above may not represent the attempts of teachers and news readers to bring the wider world to my suburban teens but there you are. That Spain had an Islamic past was unknown.  This has changed. Of course people with views have had views.  The Term Reconquest does seem a bit of a stretch to cover 700 years of History, whereas pretending the History of Andalucia was...

  We are on the way to Cordoba. It is the 12th city of Spain - 3rd in Andalusia.  Today 325,000 people live there. We are going to go large on the pre-711 events today and enjoy the walk into the modern, industrial southern suburbs but first,a station. The Estacion de Valchillon is now only for cargo, it has no passengers to send anywhere.  Manuel left the note ‘Durum wheat and nile’ - which is confusing.  Ana notes it is a ‘ A hiking route begins which at this time of year allows you to see almond trees .’ Back to Cordoba.  The Neanderthals left traces of their presence. A settlement can be traced to the 8th century BC. The Carthaginians did there thing and the Romans took over in 206BC. Things really got going in 169BC when Consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus founded a newer settlement amidst the existing one.    Marcus Didius Falco turned up here in 73AD in Lindsey Davis turned up in ‘A Dying Light in Corduba.’  Should you wish to see some of the ...

  Tomorrow we approach Cordoba. Today we don’t.  Today we sweep across wide open landscapes.  Maybe we need some great horde of horsemen are required to thunder down from one ridge to another.  Meanwhile. Five things. Until 31st December 1900 Spain used local time. Up till then Catalonia was truly in advance of Madrid - by minutes.  A Royal decree brought Greenwich Meantime to the whole of the Peninsular, Balearics, Ceuta and Melilla.  The Canary Islands kept their own time until 1st March 1922, when they moved an hour behind Madrid.  All this was a happy state until 1940 Franco wanted to cozy up to his bestie in Berlin and adopted Central European Time.   So it remains, even though in Summer Time Galicia is two and half hours behind solar time. In 1551 Domingo de Soto became the first person to state that a body in free fall accelerates uniformly.  Domingo was born in Segovia in 1494. He studied in the universities of Alcala and Paris and ob...