Emirate of Córdoba

The Emirate of Córdoba was the Umayyad Spain from 756 to 929, the falcon's nest of a fallen dynasty. Abd al-Rahman, last prince of the Umayyads, fled the Abbasid slaughter across North Africa with one loyal freedman, landed in 755, and in 756 took Córdoba from its governor: the emir who never returned east. He built the Alcazar, planted the first palm of the Ruzafa gardens, and in 785 began the Great Mosque, whose forest of columns still stands. His heirs ruled the most civilized corner of Europe: Hisham completed the mosque, Abd al-Rahman II kept Ziryab, the Blackbird singer who taught Andalusia to eat asparagus, wear deodorant and play the lute with a plectrum, and the court translated Greek medicine while the north stayed illiterate. The emirs fought Franks, Asturians and their own marcher lords every summer, losing Barcelona and gaining nothing, but Córdoba grew to perhaps a hundred thousand souls, lit at night when London was dark. In 929 Abd al-Rahman III, tired of acknowledging a distant caliph in Baghdad, proclaimed himself Commander of the Faithful: the emirate became a caliphate, and the falcon's line ruled on.