Cleveland Museum of Art

Column Capital

Date

c. 960–76

Medium

Marble

Culture

Spain, Cordoba, Madinat al-Zahra, Spanish Umayyad period (756–1031)

Department

Islamic Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This capital comes from the palatial city of Madinat al-Zahra near Cordoba (Spain) which was begun by caliph Abd al-Rahman III (r. 912–61) around 936. Large parts of the Iberian Peninsula were then under Islamic rule and experienced a cultural flowering. The city, destroyed already in 1010, was the most magnificent palace complex in Europe at the time. In the mid-1800s the ruins of Madinat al-Zahra were rediscovered and became the source of great fascination as people imagined a palace like that in the stories of One Thousand and One Nights .

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.