 The mosque in Bab al-Mardum or Cristo de la Luz mosque is the best preserved of the ten who came to exist in the Muslim era in the city of Toledo, Spain. It is located in the neighborhood of San Nicolas. It was a small oratory linked to a gateway to the city (Bab al-Mardum) for use by newcomers to Toledo or to prepare for departure. It belongs to the Taifa era and was built in the year 999, as reads the strip epigráfica its facade access. The apse was added in the twelfth century when Alfonso VII ceded to the knights of the Order of St. John, establishing there the chapel of the Holy Cross. It is believed this expansion the oldest sample of Mudejar art from that record. The name comes from the crucified Christ that was placed when it was consecrated as a chapel, and was changed to an image of the Virgen de la Luz, disappeared. The plant is square and generates, from the four central media, nine compartments vaulted. The mihrab would be to the right of the entrance in the wall of kiblah oriented to the east (now there is an arc over-bored). It is assumed that the former would be mihrab cellphone or a niche, because you will not have been archaeological remains.
The standard consists of three bodies, except that the Central is four bodies. The columns are responsible for separating the ships that make up the first tranche which relate to the horseshoe arches of the second tranche by four capitals Visigoths reuse. The third body is made up of the nine ribbed vaults Caliphate, but the central dome consists of an element that elevates the central quadrant a little more than the rest thus creating a sense of centralised plant (it takes its origin in Byzantium). Extending the twelfth century (1187) consists of a straight stretch covered with brick vault reduced and a stretch absidial covered by a barrel vault half. It is interesting to note the fresh s.XIII preserved (pantocrator, Tetramorph, saints and a cleric with a sledgehammer), and the inscriptions cúficas character devoid of meaning, since it was a type of decoration of the time.
In the southwest facade was discovered in 1889, an inscription dating the construction of the mosque, said: "In the name of Allah, did raise this mosque Ahmad ibn Hadidi, his peculiar, asking ultraterrena Allah reward for it. And it ended with the help of Allah, under the direction Musa ibn Ali, architect, and Sa'ada, conluyéndose Muharram in the year three hundred and ninety. " Registration only in Islam and the West in oriental art, having been developed exclusively with fragments of ordinary bricks. The facade consists of a body with three in vain to access, in the upper entrecruzados blind arches, decorated with a frieze of sebka (network rhombuses framed), registration and a cornice; decoration common in the first Mudejar Toledo.
The facade consists of three northwest vain again Horadada that give way to the courtyard of the mosque, covered by horseshoe arch reduced by approximately semicircular arches framed, is a typical simplification in the Mosque of Cordoba. The upper tier is focused on several arches that frame polilobulados few horseshoe arches style Caliphate and decorated with brick dovelas bicolor, referring to the mosque of Cordoba.Un entablamento nos da paso a la cornisa final. A entablature gives way to the final cornice.
The courtyard to which we access through this facade shows a well where they are peculiar presence marks the ropes collecting buckets at the edges of it. Besides shows a plant with cruise pool, or char-bagh. of Persian descent and widespread in the gardens of Al-Andalus, as the Madinat al-Zahra, the Alhambra or the Generalife. Here we find an excellent vantage point which gives access to the Puerta del Sol (lintel of s. XV).
Recently the building is being subjected to thorough study and restoration works that try to tackle, among other evils, the water that damaged its foundations. Nevertheless, the exceptional performance over the centuries from its vaults seemingly fragile, has made it defined as a "flexible structure", in the words of architect Francisco jury, responsible for its maintenance in recent years.
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