Byzantine decline and Ottoman rule spread a cloak over the landscape of old Greece, silencing it while the world continued to revolve busily elsewhere. Living memory has nothing much to say about the stones, white spots all over the sage green hillsides.

Certainly, they were hewn from some other sage green hillside and carved with the figures and symbols of some other culture. A centuries-long, slow motion explosion scattered them all over, until they became a grand puzzle that patiently awaits rediscovery and ultimately, a solution.

In the nineteenth century some adventurous Germans, rambling far off the usual beaten Classical trails, set about that grand puzzle. They cobbled together a collection of trial-and-error tools and techniques and in so doing they invented modern archaeology.

The Great Altar of Pergamon

The puzzle has been pieced together in Berlin’s Pergamonmuseum. A colossal feat worthy of the Gods, the Great Altar of Pergamon needs to be rearranged a little on occasion. Perfection is a German imperative, of course.

Pergamon was famed far and wide for its singular collection of texts. Plutarch reports that around 200,000 volumes were collected there, destined for Alexandria as a wedding present from Marcus Antonius to his bride Cleopatra.

The Egyptian queen’s gain was posterity’s loss, however, since the library of Alexandia famously burned down some time later.

The Altar, which appears to have been intended as a place for burnt sacrifices, depicts the Battle of the Gods, featuring all the main players.

Museums within a museum

In addition to impressive collections of Greek artifacts, the building also houses two enormous gates, that of the market in ancient Miletus and the other of Ishtar, from ancient Babylon, whose walls collectively constitute one of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

In the floor above the Ishtar Gate can be found an impressive collection of Islamic art and the famous Mshatta Façade, part of an Ummayad building complex. This façade dates from the eighth century, around the same time that the first Caliphs of Córdoba ruled the region of Al-Andalus.

Ancient remains to go

A visit to the Pergamonmuseum raises in my mind the issue of what has been called Elginism, namely the illegal removal of historical artefacts from their original location, or ‘cultural vandalism’ for short.

Of course, there are important differences between the Pergamon exhibits – the Great Altar, Ishtar’s Gate, the Market Gate of Miletus and the Mshatta Façade – and the Elgin Marbles, from which the term above derives. For each of the examples in the Pergamonmuseum, permission was sought and granted.

And without the painstaking work of historians and archaeologists, the Pergamon exhibits might never have been restored and would surely have deteriorated further outdoors.

That said, we will likely never see again the Pergamon exhibits in their original surroundings, nor will those whose cultural heritage has now been lost to a foreign museum. They can stand on their sage green hillsides today, but there’s nothing left to see.

Containing some 500,00 inhabitants, tenth century Córdoba was home to Europe’s largest urban population.

The Caliphate, a dynasty of Ummayad rulers exiled from their Syrian homelands, held sway over rich hinterlands that supported first the consolidation, then expansion of their influence across al-Andalus and the Maghreb.

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Córdoba

Home to the grand Caliphate, tenth century Córdoba was the splendid home of half a million residents, the largest city in Europe and possibly the world.

A legacy of learning

Whilst its scientific and cultural exploits were renowned at the time, the activities sponsored and hosted by the Caliphate remain one of our strongest links between the ancient and modern worlds.

Some of the greatest works of history, philosophy, linguistics, science and medicine were restored and translated, forming a 400,000 volume library in this singular capital of learning.

War and peace

Under the Caliphate, it is generally considered that Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in peace and relative harmony in Córdoba during this period. This assertion, based as it is on the undeniable fact that so much was achieved academically, has been challenged in recent times.

What is more certain is that, if within the walls of Córdoba there pervaded the conditions for peaceful commerce and congress, then outside the Caliphate waged war against its enemies with considerable frequency.

Mezquita de Córdoba

Córdoba’s finest symbol of the Muslim era is the Mezquita, whose state of preservation is little short of extraordinary.

Built on the site of a Visigothic Christian church from 784AD onwards, the Mezquita remains one of the largest mosques in the world.

Outside the main building containing the mihrab and musalla (prayer hall), the beautiful courtyard includes an orangery added in 987AD and several fountains, flanked by a portico probably built during a later period.

In the bright light of a spring morning, the bell tower – which encases the former minaret of the mosque – shines golden against an azure sky, casting an ever-shortening shadow over the cobbles below.

Entering the musalla, it takes a moment to become accustomed to the dim light. Then at once, the view is filled with the distinctive, alternating red and white brick arches.

The pattern demands so much attention that the viewer tends to be deterred from acquiring a proper sense of scale about the building, a curious effect that applies equally to photographs of the same.

The mihrab unusually faces south, instead of southeast in the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca. There are several extant theories that seek to explain this anomaly, not least one that describes the Caliphate’s intent to avoid facing the region from whence it came in exile. Whether out of defiance or shame, the origin of the motive is unclear.

The Caliphate eventually weakened and dissolved into a collection of emirates (taifas) during the eleventh century. Once the Christian Reconquista gathered momentum two hundred years later, it would be only a matter of time before Córdoba fell. After 1236, a succession of Christian features was appended to the (re)consecrated Mezquita with often incongruous results.

Today the city of Córdoba is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It’s late morning and we’re climbing a steep street out of the new city. The white buildings of the venerable Albayzín quarter are dazzling in the spring sunlight. These narrow streets are full of silence and long shadows where once there were the sounds of commerce and prayer.

It’s still March and until an hour or so ago, when we were across the valley at the Alhambra, it was still cool and dewy.

Taking a drink of water at the top of the hill, I wonder what it must be like here in August: I have never visited Spain in the high summer months. At such times, life is something that happens indoors and at night.

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Granada

Capital of Andalusia and former seat of the Islamic Nasrid kingdom, the venerable city of Granada is full of history.

Gazing across at the Alhambra, I try to imagine how it must have been during the last years of the Emirate.

From here, the gulf of time represented by the ravine between us, it’s tempting to think of the Generalife as an exquisite pearl in a hard stone shell: a place of splendid isolation with the sultan as a grand pariah at its centre.

Certainly, the Nasrids would have noted the erosion of influence and the dwindling of fortunes, but it would be two full centuries before the dynasty ended, during which time alliances were made and peace maintained.

The Alhambra complex was built during the fourteenth century, work having started soon after Ibn Nasr had been forced out of Jaén by the Spanish. The alcazaba, a fortified outer citadel, masks off the inner buildings set apart from which is the Generalife (Jannat al-’Arif), the summer palace of the Nasrids.

Everywhere are defining examples of the styles and motifs familiar to Al-Andalus: intricate arabesques repeating to infinity, angular kufic scripts and muqarnas and mocárabes, golden and densely detailed. Beyond, pools reflect light and symmetry and gardens enhance the richness of the place.

Also inside the walls of the citadel stands Charles V’s comparatively dull palace with its circular inner courtyard. Part of an unfinished project that cleared certain central portions of the original layout, the palace is perhaps symbolic of the subsequent Catholic kings’ disdain of history, during which time much damage was done to the structures of the Alhambra.

Today we are fortunate that so much of the complex is still standing and in relatively good condition.

The Alhambra is Spain’s most visited monument and getting tickets can be difficult, so visitors are recommended to book online well in advance.

Illuminated by the sunlight of southernmost Spain are the last traces of a great state whose grandeur and importance seem disproportionate to its lack of prominence in European history.

Perhaps the footnote status of Al-Andalus is partly due to being sandwiched between Roman civilisation and the discovery of the “New” World. Still more likely is that this near-mythical tale of a golden era of Muslim rule might otherwise take the polish off the Catholic resurgence that brought about the former’s end.

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Andalusia

Bright light on peaceful hillsides, the cool springs of southern Spain: a self-contained world with no email, websites or commuting.

The coming of the Ummayads

Inspired by the example of the prophet Muhammad, the Ummayad Caliphs rapidly expanded into territories far beyond their native Syria. In April 711, an Ummayad army under the command of Tariq ibn Ziyad landed at Gibraltar (“Rock of Tariq” = “Gibel al Tariq” = “Gibraltar”). Within eight years, the Ummayad army had taken possession of lands beyond the Pyrennees, after which its progress was finally checked.

There followed half a millenium of Muslim rule. It was a time of enlightenment, of civilised life and – to some extent at least – of cultural and religious tolerance.

However, the course of empire never runs smoothly, and whilst the Ummayads gained Al-Andalus, they would quickly lose every other territory in their power. A revolt by the rival Abbasid family unseated them from their Syrian seat in 750, leaving surviving exile Abd ar-Rahman I to fight his way to pre-eminence in Al-Andalus.

Behind him, the Abbasids of Baghdad now planned his downfall from newly-won Africa, but the emboldened Ummayad routed the force sent to defeat him and planned to take Baghdad. Revolts preoccupied Abd ar-Rahman I and his plans were never realised. In later generations, the Ummayad Emirs and Caliphs of Córdoba sought to outdo Baghdad’s splendour instead.

From Córdoba to Granada

While Abd ar-Rahman I was concerned with consolidating the strength of the nascent Emirate at Córdoba, it would be a further two centuries before successor Abd ar-Rahman III could expand it. Swelled by victories against the Abbasids and Fatimids in North Africa, and in open defiance of a weakened Baghdad, he declared himself Caliph of Córdoba in 929.

The Caliphate dwarfed its neighbours, a collection of struggling, minor Catholic kingdoms, but spared by diplomacy and allowed to thrive on trade relations these kingdoms would not remain feeble for long. In the meantime, the threat of civil war had begun to loom over the Caliphate.

In the early decades of the 11th century, the disastrous outcome of this internal strife was the division of the Caliphate’s lands into a series of smaller states, each of which were more manageable targets for the increasingly boisterous and ideologically united Christian crowns. To defend themselves, these taifa kingdoms turned to their Muslim neighbours in North Africa for assistance. Inevitably they paid with their sovereignty and the taifas were briefly reunited under Berber rule.

Despite initial successes, however, the Berber newcomers could not stem the tide of Spanish kingdoms that resented their presence. In a cataclysmic battle at Las Navas de Tolosa near Jaén, the kings of Castile, Aragon, Portugal and Navarre defeated the Caliph al-Nasir and the map of Al-Andalus began inexorably to shrink into the southeastern corner of the Iberian peninsula.

Dissent among the Spanish permitted the continuation of Muslim rule from 1232 under the Nasrid dynasty for another quarter of a millenium, albeit confined to Granada and its environs. Yet it was only a matter of time before the Christians would return. When the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella (of Aragon and Castile respectively) effectively united Spain, for the Nasrids there was nowhere left to turn but the sea.

The new invasion

In the Middle Ages, the tracks and trails of Western Europe filled with pilgrims headed for Lourdes, Santiago de Compostela, Jerusalem and other holy sites. As Chaucer makes plain in The Canterbury Tales, it wasn’t long before the leisured and the curious swelled the ranks of the pious. These fakers were the original tourists and their dust had barely settled when the Grand Tourers and the Baedeker devotees followed on to discover the beaux arts of Europe.

In 1967, the Spanish peseta was devalued and the drop in cost of living drew people from all classes to seek their own stories of sun, sea, sand and sundries in the high-rise hotels of Benidorm and the Torremolinos. When the Costas filled with foul-mouthed, heavy drinking sunburners, the British seaside turned quiet, then desolate.

For some folks, two weeks in Lloret was never enough. And if we consider the history of humanity, where there is demand, there will be supply. So from Alpine ski slopes like bottled spring water gushed forth that peculiarly un-British form of contract known as “timeshare”. Poolside holidaymakers were encouraged by a limitless supply of slickback shirtsleeves fresh out of the Essex College of Selling to take the plunge. In they dived and their trunks of money would be embarassingly lost.

In the present era, we have the Internet and people prefer to go direct. To a British enclave, using a British estate agent abroad and the foreign limb of a British bank. Old habits die hard.

Andalusia today is cosmopolitan in a way that the Caliphs would never have imagined. Visitors to the ancient pueblos blancos of the high Alpujarras are just as likely to find an English academic grabbing a few days’ peace between Trinity and Michaelmas, or a retired German hikenut in precariously short shorts following the goat trails.

El Poniente Granadino

Reasonably distant from bent builders, crooked councillors and false profits is the Poniente Granadino, the last border of Al-Andalus, where steep slopes are occupied by rows of olive trees or higher up, by thick snow.

The Poniente borders the provinces of Córdoba, Málaga and Jaén and produces some of the world’s finest olive oil. J and I stayed in a small converted stable about ten miles north of Loja, near Ventorros de San José.