Zaragoza
ZaragozaAragón
Latin toponym attested from the year 14 BC as Caesaraugusta, Roman foundation of Emperor Augustus as immune colony of Italic law, settled on the Iberian oppidum of Salduie. The Castilian form Zaragoza derives by phonetic evolution from the Arabic name Saraqusṭa, adaptation of the Latin Caesaraugusta to the Arabic phonological system (loss of the initial e, simplification of the -rs- consonantal group, preservation of the final suffix).
Evolution of the name
- Salduie pre-Roman Iberian before the 1st century BC
- Caesaraugusta Latin from 14 BC
- Saraqusṭa Andalusi Arabic 8th–12th centuries
- Çaragoça / Zaragoza medieval Aragonese from the 12th century
Reflections, to the letter
The Pilar Basilica, Baroque-Mudéjar by Felipe Sánchez and Ventura Rodríguez (1681–1872), presides over the city with its eleven domes and four towers. It preserves the Marian column of the year 40 AD where, according to tradition, the Virgin appeared to the Apostle James during his preaching in Hispania —it is among the rare Marian pillar in Christianity preserved in its original place—. The Cathedral of the Saviour (La Seo), Mudéjar and Gothic from the 13th to 17th centuries with Romanesque 12th-century east end, exhibits the most extensive Mudéjar tile wall preserved in Spain and the Mannerist altarpieces by Damián Forment and Hans Piet d'Anvers. The Aljafería Palace, 11th-century Muslim alcazar of King Al-Muqtadir (Taifa of Saraqusṭa) reformed by the Catholic Monarchs in the 15th century, preserves the unique Almohad courtyard in Spain and houses the Cortes of Aragón. And the Roman forum ensemble of Caesaraugusta, archaeological museum in the subsoil of La Seo square, exhibits the thermae, theatre and river port of the 1st century.
Glossary
- Attested
- A form or word documented in writing in historical sources; opposed to "reconstructed" (forms proposed by comparative inference but not actually documented).
- Oppidum
- A pre-Roman fortified settlement on high ground, typically Celtic or Proto-Celtiberian. The Cantabrian coast abounds in oppida that gave rise to later cities: Gigia/Xixón on the Santa Catalina hill.
- Taifa Kingdom of Saraqusṭa
- Independent Muslim kingdom formed in the middle Ebro valley after the disintegration of the Caliphate of Cordova in 1031, governed by the Hudid dynasty between 1018 and 1110. Under Al-Muqtadir (1046–1082) it reached its cultural and economic peak, attracting to court philosophers, poets, astronomers and mathematicians —Avempace, Ibn Bayya, Ibn Aflaḥ— and building the Aljafería Palace as aulic residence. The kingdom fell in 1110 to the Almoravids and in 1118 to Alfonso I the Battler, who incorporated it to the Kingdom of Aragón.
Sources
- Beltrán Lloris, M. — Caesaraugusta
- Viguera Molins, M.J. — Aragón musulmán
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Camino del Ebro