More Cordoba

As I mentioned in the previous post about Cordoba, in part of the 14th century Jews, Christians and Muslim apparently lived in peace and harmony in Cordoba during that part of the reign of the Moors. There remains in the city an area of narrow streets with grilled windows and doorways that open onto whitewashed patios and gardens; this street is called "Callo de los Judios" in what was the Jewish neighbourhood during the 14th century. On this street there are also the remains of a very small Jewish bath and Synagogue.

Cordoba was also the birthplace of the philosopher, physician and humanitarian, Moises Ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides. There are at least two statues of Cordoba's famous citizen in the area that we visited.

On our way from Granada to Cordoba we traveled through the largest olive growing area of Spain (the triangle created by Sevilla, Granada and Cordoba) where there are seemingly endless fields of olive trees. We were told that the olives are harvested by placing large sheets of material, now plastic, under the trees then shaking the tree. In earlier times and still on the smaller "farms" the trees were shaken "by hand" with sticks (hard to imagine this process with so many trees); larger growers now use a motorized tree shaker. One reason that some of the smaller growers use the old method is that studies have shown the the mechanized method shortens significantly the life of the trees which, under the old methods of harvesting, live for centuries.

There are in this post another photo of the mosque/cathedral (this one at the junction of the transept and the nave - these arches are likely not of the original mosque), the Synagogue, a couple of the Hebrew neighbourhood we walked through and one of the fields of olive trees.

After a few hours in Cordoba we started on the long bus ride back to Albufeira, Portugal.