In AD875, Abbas Ibn Firnas, a Moorish Muslim of the city of Cordoba, in the emirate of Al-Andalus, flew from a hillside. So said a couple of witnesses whose accounts survive. That makes him the first documented human aviator. What gives the claim credence is this man's host of other achievements.
An astronomer, poet, scientist and inventor, this genius worked at an amazing variety of enterprises, practical and theoretical. He devised a way to make glass from sand and designed a water clock. He drew up astronomical tables and built a chain of rings that demonstrated the motions of the planets and stars: an early planetarium.
But his imagination soared even higher: Ibn Firnas wanted to fly. He built a wooden frame coated with feathers then, according to one account, 'He invited the people of Cordoba to come and witness his flight. People watched from a nearby mountain as he flew some distance, but then the glider plummeted to the ground causing him to injure his back.' You can't win them all, but you can get major marks for trying. In Baghdad, for example, they've put up a statue and named an airport after him.
Ibn Firnas is a graphic example of the innovative nature of early Islam and of the extraordinary Islamic civilisation of Spain. From the 8th to the 15th centuries there flourished one of the great civilisations of Europe, known as Al-Andalus in Arabic, the language of its Umayyad rulers, and as Moorish Spain in English, a name that alluded to the Moroccan source of much of its culture and of its elite.
For the first three centuries of Moorish rule, from AD716 to 1031, the civilisation's capital was Cordoba, once a rich Roman city that shipped olive oil, wine and wheat to Rome, but which declined after the Visigoth invasion. Hardy Berber tribesmen from North Africa led the conquest of the Iberian peninsula but it was an Umayyad from Damascus who initiated the powerful dynasty that was to make Cordoba influential, particularly in the 10th and 11th centuries. It started with two distinct advantages, a location beside the Great River - al-Wadi al-Kabir, which in Spanish became the Guadalquivir - and the enormous Roman bridge across it, which is still there.
Exploring Cordoba today the Moorish legacy is evident, eight centuries since the Catholic kings retook the city and made it part of a resurgent Christian Spain. It is a pleasure to stroll the streets of this pleasant, relaxed city, feeling the history that emanates from every corner and at the same time enjoying the vivacity and charm that characterises the regional culture of Andalusia, which has grown so beautifully out of the Al-Andalus heartland.
Now a provincial capital with about 300,000 inhabitants, the city has four faces: Moorish, medieval, mid-period and modern. The first Cordoba you encounter is a spacious modern city, dominated by wide boulevards, leafy parks and apartment blocks, which expanded considerably in the 1990s after the opening of the AVE high-speed train line from Madrid. Then there is an elegant earlier city, largely 19th and early 20th century, which is the commercial hub, full of busy shopping streets and cafe-lined squares.