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Cordoba

The city of Cordoba is along the River Guadalquivir and inhbited since pre-historic times. The archeologists have the faith that a village was established here dated back to 1500 BC by immigrants from Almeria in southern Spain. They were in turn subdued by Iberian settlers from the Phoenician city of Gades (modern Cádiz), around the 7th century BC, who in turn were conquered by Roman forces in 206 BC.
The city is best known for its role as the capital of Islamic Spain for half a millennium, but it was ruled by Romans for a longer period. Both, the name and its position are obtained from the Romans. The three Iberian Provinces of Rome lies at the southern part. Hispania Baetica was approximately coterminous with the modern Spanish autonomía of Andalusia. In 711, both Cordoba and the Visigothic Kingdom fell to Umayyad invaders from the Emirate of Damascus. Unlike the Visigoths, the Umayyads had invaded from the south and therefore regarded Córdoba as an excellent base from which to consolidate their holdings in Spain. The Umayyad Caliphate collapsed into civil war in 1031 and the infighting that engulfed Islamic Spain led to the creation of taifas (city-states), a development that in the long run facilitated the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula. In 1162, the Almohads established Qurtubah as the capital of a kingdom they proclaimed as a caliphate, which stretched across most of North Africa. They rebuilt many of the city’s fortifications but also restricted the religious toleration shown by the Umayyads.
Cordoba lost its political and economic significance in 1492 with the completion of the Christian Reconquest of Spain and the silting up of the Guadalquivir. It becomes a prosperous city and the centre for Inquisition soon after that. In the late 19th century, tourists “rediscovered” the Mezquita, leading it to become a popular destination for visitors to Spain, as it remains to this day.