Who destroyed Medina Azahara?

The civil war in al-Andalus lasted more than a year and a half, since the initial revolt of February 1009 against the disastrous government of almanzor’s son, which put an end to the latter’s royal authority, and to the reign, by then only nominal, of Hisham II. Between 1009 and 1010 the rulers followed, supported some by the Andalusians and others by the Berbers, North African mercenaries brought by Almanzor for his army. All with the intervention, for the first time in centuries, of the Christian kingdoms of the north, who rubbed their hands seeing how the once all-powerful Cordoban empire was consumed.

The Berbers had been expelled in May 1010 by the troops of al-Mahdi, a combined army of Slavs, Andalusians and Catalans gathered at Toledo, who defeated the North Africans in Cordoba and pursued them to Cadiz. There the tables were turned, the Catalans were defeated, and they returned to Cordoba in disarray, plundering the city and making the inhabitants understand that the Berbers would return, sooner rather than later, seeking revenge. The battered capital prepared again for war.

In the summer, al-Mahdi was assassinated, and Hisham II, the last stable caliph al-Andalus had ever had, was restored. The Slavs led the defense, digging a huge moat around the city, and erecting new walls among which perhaps were what we know today as walls of the Axerchy (especially its southern part). The defenders entrenched themselves in the cities of Córdoba and Medina Azahara, leaving to their fate or preemptively razing other places such as the palace of the Arruzafa.

When the enemy arrived, he laid siege to the capital. It was almost impossible to take Cordoba by storm, but Medina Azahara, the dream of Abderramán III come true in 936, was isolated and almost defenseless. It is said that it was on November 4 that the attack began. And after so much time using his book as a source, it is best to copy the story that Antonio Muñoz Molina makes of those moments:

«In early November they laid siege to Madinat al-Zahra, storming her after three days and slaughtering first the soldiers of the garrison and then all the men, women and children who lived in the palace city of Abderraman al-Nasir, without even respecting those who had taken refuge in the mosque. They hunted the exotic animals that populated the gardens, destroyed the large marble cup on which mercury once spilled, tore off the pearls and precious stones embedded in the capitals, used as a stable for their horses the halls where the ambassadors of the kingdoms of the world had humbled themselves before the caliph of al-Andalus. Throughout that winter they relentlessly raged in the destruction and then consummated it with fire.»

The siege of Cordoba had yet to last three more years. The orchards, almunias and palaces around the city disappeared. The remaining suburbs were looted and burned, and only the small nucleus that today constitutes the historic center resisted behind the walls until the moment when there was no choice but to surrender. Although there was war before and after, this was the episode that bled and collapsed the ancient caliphal capital of half a million inhabitants and seven kilometers long, from Medina Azahara to the meanders of the Guadalquivir near the Quemadas.