Lopez Busquets (dir.), Reflections on Qurtuba in the 21st Century, Madrid Casa Arabe, 2013, 132p.

Casa Árabe is pleased to present the book “Reflections on Qurtuba in the 21st Century”, which highlights the extraordinary fact that Cordoba is a timeless city. The name “Cordoba”, from a first abstract impression, evokes a world of emotions and mental images that transcend well-known spatial and temporary borders and composes a rendition of the past, present and future of the city.

This fact, together with the city being a pioneer of Arab culture throughout its entire history, has prompted Casa Árabe to come up with the idea of offering a monographic study that links its Andalusi past with its most contemporary present. Our aim is not to trace an historically continuous thread, not least because the Arab identity of the past has little to do with the present situation, yet this past partly inspires a retrospective view that transcends the city and its Arab-Islamic legacy.

“Reflections on Qurtuba in the 21st Century” contains the following articles: Introduction (Eduardo López Busquets); Cordoba, from the Muslim Conquest to the Christian Conquest (Pierre Guichard); Qurtuba’s Monumentality and Artistic Significance (José Miguel Puerta Vílchez); Caliphal Qurtuba: Origin and Development of the Umayyad Capital of al-Andalus (Juan F. Murillo Redondo); Madinat al-Zahra: Historical Reality and Present-Day Heritage (Antonio Vallejo Triano); Qurtuba: Some Critical Considerations of the Caliphate of Cordoba and the Myth of Convivencia (Eduardo Manzano Moreno).

This publication is a partial reproduction of the collection of articles originally published in “Journal AWRAQ: Revista de análisis y pensamiento sobre el mundo árabe e islámico contemporáneo 7” (first quarter of 2013).

You can download here “Reflections on Qurtuba in the 21st Century”; the Spanish version and the full AWRAQ collection.