El Diccionaro de la Lengua Española tells us that the word azahar means white flower, particularly the blossom of orange or lemon, and that it comes from the arabic al zahr, meaning the same. The perfume of orange blossom fills the evening air in Sevilla in the summer; and it was in Sevilla that we first thought about forming Azahar. But there is another memory of blossoms in Andalucia; near Cordoba.

In early medieval times, historian Robert Hillenbrand tells us: ... "Cordoba in its prime had no peer in Europe for the amenities of civilized life. Its houses were supplied with hot and cold running water, its streets were lit at night ... Muslim, Christian and Jew lived together ... while Berbers, negroes and Slavs formed the Caliphal bodyguard." It was to Cordoba that a singer called Al Zyryab, the blackbird, came as a refugee from the caliphate of Bahgdad; he is rumored to have started the first school of music in Europe, which will have contributed to the musical tradition of Andalucia, and hence flamenco

About fifteen kilometers to the north west of the city of Cordoba, at the end of a narrow country road, in the foothills of the mountains, there are the ruins of an ancient palatial and administrative city built by the first Caliph of Al Andalus, Abdel Rahman III, beginning in 963 AD. There are many interesting legends surrounding this city, which in its short life was renowned as the most luxurious and artistically pleasing city in Europe, outshining even Cordoba. Built as the administrative capital of Muslim Spain, it was destroyed only about forty five years after it was begun, by mutinous Berber soldiers, angered by its luxury. The ruins were abandoned and plundered; it is said that some of the marble columns now are evident in the facade of the Giralda in Sevilla. The city was eventually buried by the dust and mud from the adjacent mountains of the Sierra Morena. After almost a thousand years of silence, the ruins began to be excavated in 1910, but even today only a fraction of the enormous site has been cleared. The site is called Madinat al Zahra: the city of blossoms.

One romantic legend about Madinat al Zahra is concerning its name. It is said that Abdel Rahman named it after his favorite wife who was called Zahra, or Blossom. When asked how long he would continue building the madinat, El Rahman replied that he would continue building until he stopped loving Zahra, and it is recounted that he was still expanding the city when he died, forty years after beginning construction.

Another possible, and perhaps more likely, source for the name is that he named it after the daughter of Muhammad, who was called Fatima Az Zahra (the shining one), and thus the name would be the Islamic equivalent of Marysville.

Abdel Rahman III was the descendant of two generations of women from northern Spain, captives in the wars of conquest of Al Andalus, and it is said that he was consequently known as the blue-eyed Caliph, and that he had to dye his hair dark to make him look more like an Arab.

Flamenquito 2006 (revised July 2008)

http://archnet.org/library; Maria Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World, Little, Brown and Company, 2002; Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Art and Architecture, Thames and Hudson, 1999