The Great Mosque of Córdoba (Mezquita-Catedral), begun in 785 AD under Umayyad Emir Abd al-Rahman I, is the preeminent surviving monument of Al-Andalus -- the roughly 780-year period (711-1492) in which Muslim, predominantly North African (Amazigh and Arab) rulers controlled large parts of the Iberian Peninsula. The North African conquest of Iberia reintroduced classical learning to Europe via Arabic translations of medical, scientific, and philosophical texts, and tied the peninsula closely to trans-Saharan trade networks bringing West African gold and goods north. Converted into a cathedral after the 1236 Christian reconquest of Córdoba, the building's forest of horseshoe arches remains the clearest physical record of this centuries-long North African presence in Europe.