Andalusia Art

Andalusia is an autonomous community of Spain. The region is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and Almería. Andalusia is located north of the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar, which separates Spain from Morocco, and the Atlantic Ocean.

 

The Umayyad Caliphate conquest of the Iberian peninsula in 711-718 marked the collapse of Visigothic rule. Tariq bin Zeyad, known in Spanish history and legend as Tariq el Tuerto (Tariq the one-eyed), was an African Muslim and Umayyad general who led the conquest of Visigothic Hispania in 711 under the orders of the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid I. Andalusian culture was deeply influenced by over half a millennium of Muslim rule during the Middle Ages. Córdoba became the largest and richest city in Western Europe and one of the largest in the world. The Moors established universities in Andalusia, and cultivated scholarship, bringing together the greatest achievements of all of the civilizations they had encountered. During that period Moorish and Jewish scholars played a major part in reviving and contributing to Western astronomy, medicine, philosophy, and mathematics. Under the Muslims, the name "Al-Andalus" was applied to a much larger area than the present Spanish region, and at some periods it referred to nearly the entire Iberian peninsula; it survived, however, as the name of the area where Muslim rule and culture persisted the longest.