The Vanishing Spaces of Islamic Courts (Ninth–Tenth Centuries)

At the middle of the tenth century the monk John of Gorze, an Ottonian envoy at the court of Cordoba, is impressed with the display of power of the Umayyad caliph in al-Andalus. His description of the encounter with the caliph, after three years of luxurious captivity in Cordoba, is an important source to understand the development of the Islamic Court in tenth century. Actually, at the time of John of Gorze the Islamic court had developed into a labyrinthic complex of audience halls, gardens and columned porticos separated by coloured textiles and veils. Therefore the Islamic court was perceived by Christian envoys and visitors as a draped and half-hidden world in which lived an invisible but at the same time omnipresence caliph. The caliph identified himself with his palace, in many case a new foundation, whose structure was shaped by the development of a new ceremonial which shared influences from both Byzantium and the Abbasid caliphate. An analysis of Christian Latin and Greek sources dealing with Islamic courts, like that of John of Gorze, can be a helpful and interesting way to understand, on the one hand how a foreign space was perceived and described, on the other how the structure of Islamic palaces contributed to the creation of an almost mythological courtly splendour.