Almonaster la Real is a town and

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

located in the province of

Huelva Huelva (, ) is a city in southwestern Spain, the capital of the province of Huelva in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is between two short rias though has an outlying spur including nature reserve on the Gulf of Cádiz coast. The ria ...

, Spain. According to the 2005

census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses in ...

, the city had a population of 1,805 inhabitants.

Demographics

Monuments

Mosque, 9th-10th century

As the Arab name ''Al-Munastir'' suggests, the Mosque was built on the site of a Christian monastery and incorporates some of the fabric of a

visigoth The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is kn ...

basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's Forum (Roman), forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building ...

. It is one of the few surviving Spanish rural mosques of Umayyad date (10th century, possibly 9th). It is an oddly-shaped building, made of brick and stone in a

trapezoidal A quadrilateral with at least one pair of parallel sides is called a trapezoid () in American and Canadian English. In British and other forms of English, it is called a trapezium (). A trapezoid is necessarily a convex quadrilateral in Eucli ...

shape, probably because of the hilly terrain. The prayer hall consists of a central

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

and aisles divided by brick arcades, resting on rectangular stone pillars or reused Roman columns, with at least one re-employed Roman Corinthian capital. The central

is wider than the two adjacent aisles, which are in turn wider than the outer aisles. The brick Mihrab projects into the southern flank. A small courtyard was cut out of the rock in the north-east corner, and contains a stone basin that was once used for ritual ablutions. The detached rectangular minaret on the north side has been converted into a bell tower. The eastern apse and sacristy and western porch were also added when the building was turned into a church. Sixteen undated graves were found under the floor. What little light it would have had would have come in via the patio, the door and three narrow windows, two to the left of the Mihrab and two to the right.

References

External links

Almonaster la Real
- Sistema de Información Multiterritorial de Andalucía Municipalities in the Province of Huelva {{andalusia-geo-stub