Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Conventions
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Lie of the Land: Art and Architecture Along the Roman Roads
- 2 Believing and Belonging: Late Antiquity and the Wider Mediterranean
- 3 The Visigothic Period: Fragmentation and Accretion
- 4 The Eighth and Ninth Centuries: Re-emergence and Invention
- 5 The Great Tenth Century
- 6 Dispersal After the Fall of the Caliphate
- 7 Trading Peace, Gold and Expertise, c. 1050-c. 1075
- 8 The Making of Romanesque: Reform and Synergy
- Epilogue
- Chronology 700-1100
- Bibliography of Cited Sources
- Index
7 - Trading Peace, Gold and Expertise, c. 1050-c. 1075
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Conventions
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Lie of the Land: Art and Architecture Along the Roman Roads
- 2 Believing and Belonging: Late Antiquity and the Wider Mediterranean
- 3 The Visigothic Period: Fragmentation and Accretion
- 4 The Eighth and Ninth Centuries: Re-emergence and Invention
- 5 The Great Tenth Century
- 6 Dispersal After the Fall of the Caliphate
- 7 Trading Peace, Gold and Expertise, c. 1050-c. 1075
- 8 The Making of Romanesque: Reform and Synergy
- Epilogue
- Chronology 700-1100
- Bibliography of Cited Sources
- Index
Summary
Taifa Kingdoms
Throughout the mid-eleventh century the Muslim taifa kingdoms remained the source of gold, silver, ivory, and silk, the defining materials of status, which increasingly adorned the buildings and bodies of the Christian rulers in the peninsula. Meanwhile the taifa rulers fostered a culture of music, mathematics, and poetry, which expressed a longing for the glories of Córdoba. These ‘Party Kings’ were closely associated through marriage and trade, and they surrounded themselves with a group of organized Malikī scholars. As all derived their legitimacy from Córdoba, there was a detectable taifa identity in the art and architecture of their cities, but each kingdom developed a slightly different artistic approach in dialogue with other Islamic rulers around the Mediterranean and in a spirit of rivalry with other taifas. Aside from a few dated pieces and buildings, the works can be assigned only broad dates, mostly around the middle of the eleventh century. Remnants of taifa palaces survive, from the restored but spectacular Aljafería in Zaragoza and the Alcazaba in Málaga, to the ruins of Albarracín, Almería, and Balaguer. Al-Mu‛tamid's palace in Seville is entirely lost. Marble and alabaster capitals in sharp relief decorated mosques, palaces and baths. Elaborate painted stuccowork covered surfaces in the palace at Balaguer (Lleida) with geometric and foliate ornament. Only fragments of al-Mam’ūn's Toledan palace remain, once ornamented with stuccowork and coloured glass, creating glittering images of falconry and lions. Even less remains from the taifa kingdom of Badajoz, which stretched from Mérida to Lisbon. A collection of ceramics from Mértola shows trade with Tunis or Qayrawan (Kairouan), and a plaque with Kufic script commemorates the building of a minaret for a mosque at Moura (Portugal) in 1052. Further south, the Zīrid dynasty occupied Granada, where some baths were built at the foot of the Albaicín (fig. 115). The horseshoe arcades incorporate spolia from both the Roman and Caliphal periods, perhaps in an attempt to claim the legitimizing legacy of both. Unlike most taifa capitals, Granada was not a major Roman site, so the Zīrids had to import pieces in order to perpetuate the Umayyad love of the classical.
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- Art in Spain and Portugal from the Romans to the Early Middle AgesRoutes and Myths, pp. 275 - 304Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2016