Maimonides 1135-1204

Sarah had last been in Cordoba 35 years ago. I was here with my children Robin and Catriona about 15 years ago on a fiersomely hot summer’s day that rather diminished an already fragile teenage appetite for sightseeing.

But Sarah and I both remember the medieval Jewish Quarter with great fondness as well as the statue of the great Jewish philosopher and physician Maimonides. He and his family were forced to leave when the Berber Almohad dynasty offered the Jewish population of Cordoba conversion to Islam, execution or death. Maimonides eventually ended up in Egypt and left behind a huge legacy of Jewish scholarship unifying rational Aristotelian philosophy with Jewish theology. Notably he was opposed to the idea of taking the Bible literally which he described as a form of idolatry - something fundamentalists today might do well to remember.
Sarah and I went on to revisit the Mesquita, as stunning as I remember if you ignore the cathedral plonked unceremoniously in the middle. But at least this masterpiece of Islamic architecture is still there for us to marvel at.