Byzantine Mosaics in Islamic Contexts: The Umayyad Mosque in Córdoba

International audienceThe Umayyad Mosque of Córdoba preser ves the only monumental Islamic mosaic decoration from the 10th centur y. Islamic textual sources claim a Byzantine origin of the material and the artisans. To put this hypothesis to the test, we conducted chemical analysis of the tesserae. Our compositional data provide the first solid evidence that the majority of the 10th-centur y tesserae came from Byzantium, mak-ing it the largest assemblage of Byzantine high boron glass so far identified outside the Byzantine Empire. The use of Byzantine mosaics in the mosque of Córdoba thus corroborates the cross-cultural exchange of specialised products across the length of the Mediterranean in the 10th centur y