So there is a guy who looks into the past. Opens the attic of a long time past to find out if some one in the present is abusing it, and re-writing history for Political gain. Like Newt Gingrich does when he talks about the Cordoba House.You would know it as the "Ground Zero Mosque. Carl Pyrdum sets him straight with a great blog based on research. Apparently, something "Newt" doesn't use anymore
Last week Gingrich released a statement that went something like this:The proposed "Cordoba House" overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks - is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites. For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex.
The Muslims conquered Cordoba in 712. The Christian church that was later transformed into the Great Mosque of Cordoba apparently and continued hosting Christian worship for at least a generation after that. Work on the Mosque didn't actually begin until seventy-odd years later in 784, and the mosque only became "the world's third-largest" late in the tenth century, after a series of expansions by much later rulers, probably around 987 or so. Muslim historians writing about the Great Mosque don't point to it as a symbol of Muslim triumph over Christians; rather, they treat it primarily as a symbol of Muslim victory over other Muslims.
The mosque was indeed begun in the wake of a Muslim conquest--just not the conquest of the Christians. Rather, it was ordered built by the Umayyad emir Abd-ar-Ramman the first, probably in part to commemorate his successful conquest of Cordoba in the 750's, fought against other Muslim chieftains loyal to the rival Abbasid Caliphate, and his successful repulsion of subsequent Abbasid attempts to dislodge him by force throughout the 760's. This is, incidentally, probably why the Great Mosque--unlike almost every other Mosque in the Muslim world--is built facing south.
Usually, Mosques are built facing Mecca, as Muslims are meant to pray towards the holy city. But the Great Mosque is oriented as if it were actually built in Damascus, the original capital of the Umayyads and the city from which Abd-Ar-Ramman had had to flee in exile when it was conquered by the Abbasids. Damascus is north of Mecca, while Cordoba is much further west. By pointing his Mosque south, Abd-ar-Ramman the first was telling his Muslim rivals, "This exile to Iberia is a temporary thing; you may hold Damascus for now, but in the eyes of our god, my family still controls it."
Muslim historians of the late tenth century tell that this Abd-ar-Ramman bought the church from the Christian congregation after sharing it with them for fifty years "following the example of Abu Ubayda and Khalid, according to the judgement of Caliph Umar in partitioning Christian churches like that of Damascus and other [cities] that were taken of peaceful accord".
This is the important fact that Newt hopes those who read his polemic will be ignorant of: for a ruler to be legitimate in Muslim eyes in the tenth century, during the time when the Great Mosque was being expanded into its present-day dimensions, it was important to emphasize the peaceful succession of Islam from the other religions in the area.
Well, I know that Newt hasn't been a Catholic for very long now, but maybe his priest ought to direct him to read a little thing called "The Catholic Encyclopedia". Allow me to quote from the 1917 edition (which has the virtue of being in the public domain and easily searchable) and its entry on Cordoba:
Last week Gingrich released a statement that went something like this:The proposed "Cordoba House" overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks - is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites. For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex.
The Muslims conquered Cordoba in 712. The Christian church that was later transformed into the Great Mosque of Cordoba apparently and continued hosting Christian worship for at least a generation after that. Work on the Mosque didn't actually begin until seventy-odd years later in 784, and the mosque only became "the world's third-largest" late in the tenth century, after a series of expansions by much later rulers, probably around 987 or so. Muslim historians writing about the Great Mosque don't point to it as a symbol of Muslim triumph over Christians; rather, they treat it primarily as a symbol of Muslim victory over other Muslims.
The mosque was indeed begun in the wake of a Muslim conquest--just not the conquest of the Christians. Rather, it was ordered built by the Umayyad emir Abd-ar-Ramman the first, probably in part to commemorate his successful conquest of Cordoba in the 750's, fought against other Muslim chieftains loyal to the rival Abbasid Caliphate, and his successful repulsion of subsequent Abbasid attempts to dislodge him by force throughout the 760's. This is, incidentally, probably why the Great Mosque--unlike almost every other Mosque in the Muslim world--is built facing south.
Usually, Mosques are built facing Mecca, as Muslims are meant to pray towards the holy city. But the Great Mosque is oriented as if it were actually built in Damascus, the original capital of the Umayyads and the city from which Abd-Ar-Ramman had had to flee in exile when it was conquered by the Abbasids. Damascus is north of Mecca, while Cordoba is much further west. By pointing his Mosque south, Abd-ar-Ramman the first was telling his Muslim rivals, "This exile to Iberia is a temporary thing; you may hold Damascus for now, but in the eyes of our god, my family still controls it."
Muslim historians of the late tenth century tell that this Abd-ar-Ramman bought the church from the Christian congregation after sharing it with them for fifty years "following the example of Abu Ubayda and Khalid, according to the judgement of Caliph Umar in partitioning Christian churches like that of Damascus and other [cities] that were taken of peaceful accord".
This is the important fact that Newt hopes those who read his polemic will be ignorant of: for a ruler to be legitimate in Muslim eyes in the tenth century, during the time when the Great Mosque was being expanded into its present-day dimensions, it was important to emphasize the peaceful succession of Islam from the other religions in the area.
Well, I know that Newt hasn't been a Catholic for very long now, but maybe his priest ought to direct him to read a little thing called "The Catholic Encyclopedia". Allow me to quote from the 1917 edition (which has the virtue of being in the public domain and easily searchable) and its entry on Cordoba:
In 786 the Arab caliph, Abd-er Rahman I, began the construction of the great mosque of Cordova, now the cathedral, and compelled many Christians to take part in the preparation of the site and foundations. Though they suffered many vexations, the Christians continued to enjoy freedom of worship, and this tolerant attitude of the ameers seduced not a few Christians from their original allegiance. Both Christians and Arabs co-operated at this time to make Cordova a flourishing city, the elegant refinement of which was unequaled in Europe. [...] the citizens of Cordova, Arabs, Christians, and Jews, enjoyed so high a degree of literary culture that the city was known as the New Athens. From all quarters came students eager to drink at its founts of knowledge. Among the men after-wards famous who studied at Cordova were the scholarly monk Gerbert, destined to sit on the Chair of Peter as Sylvester II (999-1003), the Jewish rabbis Moses and Maimonides, and the famous Spanish-Arabian commentator on Aristotle, Averroes.
So it's easy to see why a group of Muslims creating a community center in the heart of a majority Christian country in a city known for its large Jewish population might name it "The Cordoba House" They're not, as Gingrich hopes we would believe, discreetly laughing at us because "Cordoba" is some double-secret Islamist code for "conquest"; rather, they're hoping to associate themselves with a particular time in medieval history when the largest library in Western Europe was to be found in Cordoba, a city in which scholars of all three major Abrahamic religions were free to study side-by-side.
Excerpts from the great young Blogger "Got Medievil"
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