The Umayyad caliphate of al-Andalus, proclaimed by Abd al-Rahman III at Córdoba in 929 and the dominant power of tenth-century Iberia until it fragmented into the taifa kingdoms after 1031.
The Caliphate of Córdoba was declared by Abd al-Rahman III in 929, when the Umayyad ruler of al-Andalus, until then styled emir, claimed the title of caliph in his own right. For a century it was the strongest and most sophisticated state in western Europe, ruling most of the Iberian Peninsula from Córdoba.
It should not be confused with the earlier Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus, from whose overthrown dynasty its founders descended. The Córdoban caliphate was a distinct, Iberian state, born of the Umayyad survival in the far west after 750.
Under Abd al-Rahman III and his son al-Hakam II the caliphate flourished as a centre of learning, art and commerce, and the palace-city of Medina Azahara and the expanded Great Mosque of Córdoba proclaimed its magnificence. Late in the tenth century the chamberlain Almanzor seized effective power and led devastating raids against the Christian north.
After Almanzor's death the state fell into civil war (the fitna), and in 1031 the caliphate was abolished. Al-Andalus splintered into the taifa kingdoms — the small, competing Muslim states whose weakness would open the way for Christian expansion.