Places and organizations
Where to see it, and who studies it.
Sites in Spain, Portugal and Morocco, two museums in the United States, and the archives and researchers keeping this history.
Places
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Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba
Córdoba, Spain
The 8th-century Great Mosque, with a cathedral installed inside it in 1236, at the heart of a UNESCO World Heritage historic center.
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Alhambra and Generalife
Granada, Spain
The Nasrid palace city and its gardens, beside the Albayín, which UNESCO calls a rich legacy of Moorish town planning.
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Madinat al-Zahra Archaeological Site
Near Córdoba, Spain
Ruins of the 10th-century city built as the seat of the Caliphate of Córdoba, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2018.
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Real Alcázar of Seville
Seville, Spain
A royal palace that began as a 10th-century Muslim governor’s palace, where parts of the original Almohad palace sit beside the Mudéjar palace of King Pedro I.
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Seville Cathedral and the Giralda
Seville, Spain
A Gothic cathedral founded in 1403 on the site of the Almohad mosque, whose minaret became the Giralda bell tower.
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Moorish Castle (Castelo dos Mouros)
Sintra, Portugal
A hilltop fortress founded under Islamic rule to guard the approaches to Lisbon, where Moors lived until 1147, with remains of an Islamic quarter.
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Medina of Marrakesh and the Koutoubia Mosque
Marrakesh, Morocco
A city founded by the Almoravids in 1070 to 72 and later the Almohad capital, whose Koutoubia Mosque minaret (77 meters) is a landmark of Muslim architecture.
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Walters Art Museum
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Owns Pontormo’s portrait of Maria Salviati and Giulia de’ Medici, which the museum says may be the first formal portrait of a girl of African ancestry in European art.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, New York, USA
Owns Diego Velázquez’s 1650 portrait of Afro-Hispanic painter Juan de Pareja, the subject of its 2023 exhibition.
Organizations and free libraries
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Escuela de Estudios Árabes (CSIC), Granada
A research institute of Spain’s national research council, founded in 1932, whose research is closely tied to the history and heritage of Islamic Granada.
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Fundación El legado andalusí
A public foundation of Andalusia’s regional government, supported by the Council of Europe, that promotes and preserves the cultural and artistic heritage of al-Andalus, including cultural routes.
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American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS): LIBRO
A scholarly association whose Library of Iberian Resources Online gives no-cost online access to out-of-print books, essays, and editions on medieval Iberian history.
Go to American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain
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MetPublications (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
The Met’s publishing portal, where the 480-page exhibition book Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain (1992) can be read online or downloaded as a PDF.
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Image of the Black Archive & Library, Hutchins Center, Harvard University
An archive founded in 1960 that holds photographs of 26,000 works of art documenting how people of African descent have been represented in art.
Go to Image of the Black Archive & Library, Hutchins Center, Harvard University
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Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (New York Public Library): Moorish Science Temple of America collection
A 1926 to 67 collection of Temple letters, certificates, legal documents, pamphlets, newspapers, and posters, portions of which are digitized.