The city was founded in 1573 by Luis Geronimo de Cabrera and was for a long time distinguished for its learning and piety. It was the headquarters of the Jesuits in this part of South America for two centuries, and for a time the capital of the Spanish intendencia of Tucuman. The expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 proved to be a serious blow to the academic reputation of the city, from which it did not recover until 1870, when President Sarmiento engaged some eminent scientific men from Europe to teach modern science in the university.
CÓRDOBA, a town of the state of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 55 m. W.S.W. of the port of Vera Cruz, in a highly fertile valley, near the volcano of Orizaba, and 2880 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1895) 7974. The surrounding district produces sugar, tobacco and coffee, Córdoba being one of the principal coffee-producing centres of Mexico. It also manufactures cotton and woollen fabrics. The town is regularly laid out and built of stone, and contains several handsome edifices, chief of which is the old cathedral. Córdoba was a town of considerable importance in colonial times, but fell into decay after the revolution. The railway from Vera Cruz to Mexico, which passes through it, and the development of coffee production, have helped the city to recover a part of its lost trade.
CORDON (a French derivative of corde, cord), a word used in many applications of its meaning of “line” or “cord,” and particularly of a cord of gold or silver lace worn in military and other uniforms. The word is especially used of the sash or ribbon worn by members of an order of knighthood, crossing from one shoulder to the opposite hip. The cordon bleu, the sky-blue ribbon of the knight’s grand cross of the order of the Holy Spirit, the highest order of the Bourbon kings of France, was, like the “blue ribbon” of the English Garter, taken as a type of the highest reward or prize to which any one can attain (see also [Cookery]). In heraldry, “cordons” are the ornamental cords which, with the hats to which they are attached, ensign the shields of arms of certain ecclesiastical dignitaries; they are interlaced to form a mesh or network and terminate in rows of tassels. A cardinal’s cordon is gules with five rows of fifteen tassels, an archbishop’s vert with four rows of ten, and a bishop’s also vert, with three rows of six. In architecture a “cordon” is a projecting band of stone along the outside of a building, a string-course. The word is frequently used in a transferred sense of a line of posts or stations to guard an enclosed area from unauthorized passage, e.g. a military or police cordon, and especially a sanitary cordon, a line of posts to prevent communication from or with an area infected with disease.
CORDOVA (Span. Córdoba), an inland province of southern Spain, bounded on the N.E. by Ciudad Real, E. by Jaén, S.E. by Granada, S. by Málaga, S.W. and W. by Seville, and N.W. by Badajoz. Pop. (1900) 455,859; area, 5299 sq. m. The river Guadalquivir divides the province into two very dissimilar portions. On the right bank is the mountainous region of the Sierra Morena, less peopled and fertile than the left bank, with its great plains (La Campiña) and slightly undulating country towards the south and south-east, where the surface again becomes mountainous with the outlying ridges of the Sierra Nevada. The Guadalquivir, flowing from E.N.E. to W.S.W., waters the richest districts of Cordova, and has many tributaries, notably the Bembezar, Guadiato and Guadamellato, on the right, and the Genil and Guadajoz on the left. The northern districts (Los Pedroches) are drained by several small tributaries of the Guadiana. The climate is much varied. Snow is to be found for months on the highest peaks of the mountains; mild temperature in the plains, except in the few torrid summer months, when rain seldom falls. The peasantry are chiefly occupied in various branches of husbandry; sheep-farming and the culture of the olive employ large numbers. The agricultural wealth of Cordova is, however, not fully exploited, owing to the conservatism and backward education of the peasantry. There are no great manufacturing towns, but mining is an industry of some importance. In 1903 coal was obtained in considerable quantities in the Belmez district; argentiferous lead and zinc near Pozoblanco and elsewhere; iron ore at Luque, near Baena. A small amount of bismuth is also obtained. Mining is facilitated by a fairly complete and well-kept system of communication by road and railway. The main line Madrid-Lináres-Seville follows the Guadalquivir valley throughout the province, passing through the capital, Cordova. Here it meets the line from Almorchón, on the north, to Málaga, on the south, which has three important branches—Belmez-Fuente del Arco, Cordova-Utrera, and Puente Genil-Jaén. After the capital, the principal towns are Aguilar de la Frontera (13,236), Baena (14,539), Cabra (13,127), Fuente Ovejuna (11,777), Lucena (21,179), Montilla (13,603), Montoro (14,581), Pozoblanco (12,792), Priego de Cordoba (16,904) and Puente Genil (12,956). These are described under separate headings. Other towns of less importance are Adamuz (6974), Belalcázar (7682), Belmez (8978), Bujalance (10,756), Castro del Río (11,821), Hinojosa del Duque (10,673), Palma del Río (7914), Rute (10,740) and Villafranca de Córdoba (9771).
CORDOVA (Span. Córdoba; Lat. Corduba), the capital of the Spanish province of Cordova, on the southern slopes of the Sierra de Cordova, and the right bank of the river Guadalquivir. Pop. (1900) 58,275. At Cordova the Madrid-Seville railway meets the branch line from Almorchón to Málaga. The city is an episcopal see. Few fragments remain of its Moorish walls, which were erected on Roman foundations and enclosed a very wide area, now largely occupied by garden-ground cleared from the ruins of ancient buildings. On the outskirts are many modern factories in striking contrast with the surrounding orange, lemon and olive plantations, and with the pastures which belong to the celebrated Cordovan school of bull-fighting. Nearer the centre the streets are for the most part narrow and crooked. Almost every building, however, is profusely covered with whitewash, and thus there is little difference on the surface between the oldest and the most modern houses. The southern suburb communicates with the town by means of a bridge of sixteen arches across the river, exhibiting the usual combination of Roman and Moorish masonry and dominated at the one end by an elevated statue of the patron saint, St Raphael, whose effigy is to be seen in various other quarters of the city. The most important of the public buildings are the cathedral, the old monastic establishments, the churches, the bishop’s palace, the city hall, the hospitals and the schools and colleges, including the academy for girls founded in 1590 by Bishop Pacheco of Cordova, which is empowered to grant degrees. The Alcázar, or royal palace, stands on the south-west amid the gardens laid out by its builder, the caliph Abd-ar-Rahman III. (912-961). Its older parts are in ruins, and even the so-called New Alcázar, erected by Alphonso XI. of Castile in 1328, and long used as the offices of the Holy Inquisition, has only one wing in good repair, which serves as a prison.
But the glory of Cordova, surpassing all its other Moorish or Christian buildings, is the mezquita, or mosque, now a cathedral, but originally founded on the site of a Roman temple and a Visigothic church by Abd-ar-Rahman I. (756-788), who wished to confirm the power of his caliphate by making its capital a great religious centre. Immigration from all the lands of Islam soon rendered a larger mosque necessary, owing to the greatly increased multitude of worshippers, and, by orders of Abd-ar-Rahman II. (822-852) and Al-Hakim II. (961-976), the original size was doubled. After various minor additions, Al-Mansur, the vizier of the caliph Hisham II. (976-1009), again enlarged the Zeca, or House of Purification, as the mosque was named, to twice its former size, rendering it the largest sacred building of Islam, after the Kaaba at Mecca. The ground plan of the completed mosque forms a rectangle, measuring 570 ft. in length and 425 in breadth, or little less than St Peter’s in Rome. About one-third of this area is occupied by the courtyard, and the cloisters which surround it on the north, west and east. The exterior, with the straight lines of its square buttress towers, has a heavy and somewhat ungainly appearance; but the interior is one of the most beautiful specimens of Moorish architecture. Passing through a grand courtyard about 500 ft. in length, shady with palm and cypress and orange trees and watered by five fountains, the visitor enters on the south a magnificent and bewildering labyrinth of pillars in which porphyry, jasper and many-coloured marbles are boldly combined. Part came from the spoils of Nîmes or Narbonne, part from Seville or Tarragona, some from the older ruins of Carthage, and others as a present to Abd-ar-Rahman I. from the East Roman emperor Leo IV., who sent also from Constantinople his own skilled workmen, with 16 tons of tesserae for the mosaics. Originally of different heights, the pillars have been adjusted to their present standard of 12 ft. either by being sunk into the soil or by the addition of Corinthian capitals. Twelve hundred was the number of the columns in the original building, but many have been destroyed. The pillars divide the area of the building from north to south, longitudinally into nineteen and transversely into twenty-nine aisles—each row supporting a tier of open Moorish arches of the same height (12 ft.) with a third and similar tier superimposed upon the second. The full height of the ceiling is thus about 35 ft. The Moorish character of the building was unfortunately impaired in the 16th century by the formation in the interior of a crucero, or high altar and cruciform choir, by the addition of numerous chapels along the sides of the vast quadrangle, and by the erection of a belfry 300 ft. high in room of the old minaret. The crucero in itself is no disgrace to the architect Hernan Ruiz, but every lover of art must sympathize with the rebuke administered by the emperor Charles V. (1500-1558) to the cathedral authorities: “You have built here what could have been built as well anywhere else; and you have destroyed what was unique in the world.” Magnificent, indeed, as the cathedral still is, it is almost impossible to realize what the mosque must have been when the worshippers thronged through its nineteen gateways of bronze, and its 4700 lamps, fed with perfumed oil, illuminated its brilliant aisles. Of the exquisite elaboration bestowed on the more sacred portions abundant proof is afforded by the third Mihrab, or prayer-recess, a small 10th-century chapel, heptagonal in shape, roofed with a single shell-like block of snow-white marble, and inlaid with Byzantine mosaics of glass and gold.