- al-Andalus
- the Islamic name for the Iberian peninsula through the Middle Ages
- the Great Mosque
- the Great Mosque of striped arches — a cathedral today, still a school of architecture
- the Umayyads
- the dynasty that fled Damascus and set up first an emirate, then a caliphate, there
- Abd al-Rahman III
- the emir who declared himself caliph and made Cordoba the jewel of the west
- al-Hakam II
- the caliph of the great library, which held hundreds of thousands of volumes
- Madinat al-Zahra
- the royal city the caliph built beside Cordoba as a seat of rule
- the fitna
- the civil war that dissolved the caliphate in 1031 into small statelets
- the taifa kings
- the small kings who carved up al-Andalus after the caliphate's fall
- the Almoravids
- the Moroccan dynasty that crossed over to al-Andalus's rescue after the taifas
- the Almohads
- the dynasty that followed the Almoravids, ruling from Seville and Marrakesh
- 1236
- the year the city fell to Ferdinand III of Castile
- the Guadalquivir
- the great river the city stands on, which its old bridges still cross
