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The Abbasids brought down the Umayyads in 750 and sought to kill as many Umayyad family members as possible to avoid its later resurgence. One famous Umayyad who escaped was Abd al Rahman. He fled westward, finally making it to his family’s distant territory in Spain, where he established a western Umayyad dynasty that lasted another three hundred years. He established a capital in the city of Cordoba in 755.
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In around 785, Abd al-Rahman ordered the construction of the Great Mosque of Cordoba. This mosque, known in Spanish as "La Mesquite", would become the architectural centerpiece of the capital, and of the kingdom. One of the building’s most distinctive features is the prayer hall. Its high ceiling is supported by a forest of columns and arcades, decorated in red and white.
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Through his policy of attracting opposing interest groups and dealing sternly with rebellion, Abd al-Rahman achieved a modicum of stability. He perfected the Syrian administrative bureaus introduced earlier in the century and further centralized government operations in Cordoba, which by the end of his reign began to resemble a great capital. On Sept. 30, 788, Abd al-Rahman I died in Cordoba.
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Abd al-Rahman succeeded his father as Emir of Cordoba in 822 and engaged in nearly continuous warfare against Alfonso II of Asturias, whose southward advance he halted. In 837, he suppressed a revolt of Christians and Jews in Toledo. He issued a decree by which the Christians were forbidden to seek martyrdom, and he had a Christian synod held to forbid martyrdom. In 844, Abd ar-Rahman repulsed an assault by Vikings.
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Abd al-Rahman was famous for his public building program in Cordoba where he died in 852. He made additions to the Mosque–Cathedral of Cordoba. A vigorous and effective frontier warrior, he was also well known as a patron of the arts. He was also involved in the execution of the "Martyrs of Córdoba".
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The Muslim period in Spain is often described as a 'golden age' of learning where libraries, colleges, public baths were established and literature, poetry and architecture flourished. Even though the Spanish caliphate challenged Abbasid authority in the east, scholars moved between the two regions. Works of philosophy and science reached Cordoba where libraries and houses of study were formed. Poetry flourished in the 900s; one well-known anthology is the Kitab al-Hada'iq.
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Under Abd al-Rahman III, Umayyad rule in Spain reached its peak. He effectively put down rebellions and secured recognition from Europe’s political and religious leaders. In 929, Abd al-Rahman took advantage of religious conflict in the Middle East and named himself Emir (caliph). He asserted Umayyad power in North Africa against an Egyptian dynasty called the Fatimids. Cordoba was the largest city in Europe at the time, with half a million people.
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In time, the central authority of the state declined and, by the early eleventh century, Spain had broken up into a multiplicity of small kingdoms. The Umayyads were ultimately replaced in 1031 by a succession of other Muslim dynasties in Spain that lasted until 1492. However, the establishment of Arab culture in Iberia bore fruit for those four and a half centuries.
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The Muslim scholar, Ibn Rushd, (1126-1198) was known in the west as Averroes. He translated Aristotle, wrote about medicine, physics and philosophy. While religious minorities didn’t have the same rights as Muslims, Jewish and Christian scholars also made intellectual contributions with the support of Muslim rulers.
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Moses Maimonides was a brilliant doctor, rabbi and philosopher. He lived in Spain and North Africa, and finally died in Egypt in 1204. Aside from being revered by Jewish historians, Maimonides also figures very prominently in the history of Islamic and Arab sciences and is mentioned extensively in studies. Influenced by Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and his Averroes, he in his turn influenced other prominent Arab and Muslim philosophers and scientists.
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The Alhambra ("the Red Castle") at Granada is the architectural masterpiece of Western Islam and belongs to this last period of Muslim rule. It was originally constructed as a small fortress, and then largely ignored until its ruins were renovated and rebuilt in the mid-13th century by Mohammed bin Al-Ahmar of the Emirate of Granada, who built its current palace and walls. It was converted into a royal palace in 1333 by Yusuf I, Sultan of Granada.
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The coalition of Christian states eventually reduced the presence of Islam to a strip of country in the southeast around Granada. In 1492, Granada surrendered to the Christians and, within a few years, all Muslims (and Jews) were expelled from Spain. Islamic Spain had played an important role as the intellectual Muslim centre in the West, through which Far and Near Eastern as well as Greek and Arabic technical, scientific and philosophical knowledge reached medieval Europe.
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