Caliphate of Cordoba

The Caliphate of Cordoba ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula and parts of North Africa from 929 to 1031, proclaimed when the Umayyad emir Abd al-Rahman III took the title of caliph, asserting authority independent of both the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad and the rival Fatimid Caliphate. Governed from the city of Cordoba, which grew into one of the largest and most culturally advanced cities in Europe, the caliphate presided over a period often described as a golden age of learning, architecture and coexistence among Muslim, Christian and Jewish populations, and it produced the celebrated Great Mosque of Cordoba. The caliphate reached its peak under Abd al-Rahman III and his son al-Hakam II, but suffered growing instability under the powerful chamberlain Al-Mansur and his successors in the early eleventh century. Civil war, known as the Fitna of al-Andalus, broke out after 1009, and the caliphate formally dissolved in 1031, fragmenting into a patchwork of smaller successor kingdoms known as the taifas.