What fueled the street lights in 13th-century Cordoba?

Question

Córdoba, Spain is often said to have had street lights in its Muslim period, which ended in 1236. How did those street lights work?

In Lawrence of Arabia, Prince Faisal was dramatized as having said to Lawrence: "You know, Lieutenant, in the Arab city of Córdoba were two miles of public lighting in the streets when London was a village." Similarly, Ibn Said is said to have reported that "the streets were well paved and lighted, the lights being attached to the outer doors and corners of the houses", as quoted in a link from this answer.

Can anyone provide details on this? In particular, what fueled those street lamps -- was it olive oil?

@Matt F. I also note that in the time of the Caliphs at Cordoba, London was not exactly a village. It probably counted as a town or a small city, with a population in the thousands. — MAGolding, Apr 26 '21 at 16:40
@MAGolding, the 13th-century populations seem to have differed by only a factor of two: Cordoba around 60,000 and London around 30,000, according to table 1 of this paper by De Long and Shleifer: https://delong.typepad.com/princes.pdf. But Prince Faisal's next line is that these street lights were "nine centuries ago": in 1050 Cordoba had 450,000 people and was the largest city in Europe. — Matt F., Apr 26 '21 at 17:17
@MattF. I think Constantinople was at least of the same order of magnitude if not bigger (Wikipedia claims 500,000 but who knows). Which of course takes nothing from Cordoba :) — Denis Nardin, Apr 28 '21 at 09:05
As the question is very specific, I'll refrain from adding as an answer my general knowledge: The liquid fractions of rendered tallow was used for lighting, as was sometimes the wax fraction but then as tallow candles. I'd say as tallow oil was more used for city lighting due to the fact that tallow candles were commodity that could be sold, and tallow oil was probably cheaper, seeing as the lack of reasonable transportation of liquids made it a less valuable byproduct. If it was a rich city, whale oil is also a likely candidate, burns brighter and with less soot and sputter. — Stian, Apr 28 '21 at 11:05
@StianYttervik, I was skeptical about whale oil in Cordoba, but now I see (to my surprise) that Basque whalers sold whale oil in nearby Castille at this time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Basque_whaling#Establishment_and_expansion — Matt F., Apr 29 '21 at 02:13

Avery · Accepted Answer · 2021-04-27T12:54:28.523

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I have traced back this claim to its original source. Come along with me on this journey! Let's start with a source which used to be linked on Wikipedia and is commonly cited online:

For ten miles in a direct line on the darkest night the pedestrian could walk securely through the city and its environs by the light of innumerable lamps.

Samuel Parsons Scott, History of the Moorish Empire in Europe (1904), vol. 1, p. 619.

This book has a massive bibliography but no footnotes, which makes it useless. However, it did make me google harder, and find an 1833 reference:

For ten miles the citizens could travel by the light of lamps along an uninterrupted extent of buildings.

Andrew Crichton, The History of Arabia (New York: Harper, 1845 [1833]), vol. 2, 52

The only source cited anywhere near this sentence is Washington Irving (!), who wrote a book called Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada in 1829. I found that this section of Irving's book was derived from an even earlier book:

Ashshakandy† relates, in one of his works, that through Cordova, with the continuations of Azzahra and Azzahira, he had travelled ten miles by the light of lamps along an uninterrupted extent of buildings.

† Abū'l Walid Ismāil, an eminent man from Shakanda, which is an ancient town on the south side of the river over against Cordova. He wrote a treatise on the excellence of Andalusia, in opposition to Abū Yahya, who vindicated that of Africa; and died at Seville in the year 629.

John Shakespear and Thomas Hartwell Horne, The History of the Mahometan Empire in Spain (London: William Bulmer and Co., 1816), 162

This incredibly helpful footnote points us to the original source, a 13th century CE Andalusian named aš-Šaqundī!

Se dice que estaban tan pobladas las construcciones de Córdoba, al-Zahrā’ y al-Zāhira, que se podía caminar por ellas a la luz de las lámparas por espacio de diez millas, sin interrupción alguna. (Google Translate: "It is said that the buildings of Córdoba, al-Zahrā’ and al-Zāhira, were so populated that one could walk through them by the light of the lamps for ten miles, without any interruption.")

Abu-l-Walid Ismāʿīl Ibn-Muḥammad aš-Šaqundī, Elogio del islam español (Risāla fi fadl al-Andalus), trans. Emilio García Gómez (Madrid: Impr. de E. Maestre, 1934), p. 105

Finding this original source corrects a major error introduced through the chain of transmission and helps us understand the type of lighting being discussed here. These were not street lamps installed by the caliph. This would not have been a system of lamps posted on the road, but lamps installed outside doors by homeowners -- or, as commenters suggest, lamps from the inside of homes.

We actually have examples of this exact model of Andalusian outdoor lamp in museums. You can see the spike inside on which a tallow candle would have been placed. The shape of the lamp would allow users to post it directly over a door.

There is also a good article about Andalusian indoor lighting online which shows that indoor lamps of that time used oil and a fuel source resting on top of water in a glass fixture. Some of the Islamicate glass fixtures of this time are noted for their beauty.

edited Apr 27 '21 at 12:54

answered Apr 26 '21 at 14:39

Avery

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Both the Washington Irving connection and the distinction between indoor oil vs outdoor tallow surprised me — thanks for chasing this down! – Matt F. Apr 26 '21 at 16:18
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Now that we know the contemporary origin of the story, is it convincing? It begins with “it is said”. It references al-Zahira, which was destroyed in 1009 (es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medina_Alzahira), two centuries before as-Saqundi’s text. And it does not explain — what were the incentives for the Cordobans to use all this tallow to provide street-facing lights from their houses? – Matt F. Apr 26 '21 at 22:56
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Šaqundī's story is certainly a lament for the good old days so I don't know if we should be expected to believe in "ten miles of uninterrupted houses" over the short period 987-1009. The reddit /r/AskHistorians might be able to locate a Spanish history expert with more specialized knowledge than me. As for posting a light over your door, it makes it easy to identify your door for strangers and to identify the strangers when they knocking at night, so my guess is that it was a useful household expense. – Avery Apr 26 '21 at 23:01
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Posting security lights remains common today - as lighting one's door to make it visible to neighbours is believed to discourage thieves and vandals. That could well have been true a thousand years ago as well. – Pieter Geerkens Apr 26 '21 at 23:05
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Hmmm. I would read that passage to mean "I could walk for ten miles by the lamplight that escaped from the inside of homes through windows." Bear in mind that people accustomed to walk by moonlight or starlight would find levels of illumination much below modern street lights to be quite sufficient. – Mary Apr 27 '21 at 01:08
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@MattF. Irving's connection to that part of the world is pretty interesting. His 1828 visit to the Alhambra in Granada and subsequent book contributed to the eventual repair and restoration of the site, which was at the time in disrepair and occupied by vagrants, but is now the most popular tourist destination in Spain. – Nuclear Hoagie Apr 27 '21 at 13:28
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"used oil and a fuel source resting on top of water in a glass fixture" do you mean 'oil as a fuel source'? – JimmyJames Apr 27 '21 at 13:48
I remember vaguely having read 'candle-maker' casually cited among usual jobs / professions, probably around the middle ages. It would make sense in this context, that is a lot of ceramic lamps and tallow to produce. Maybe Cordoba was not the only one, and it only stand out due to being a larger city? – Luiz Apr 27 '21 at 19:01
@Luiz: The butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker in the English nursery rhyme go back to the 14th century, according to a librarian in an NPR interview (audio and transcript). – Toby Bartels Apr 28 '21 at 22:00
the "this exact model of Andalusian outdoor lamp" link leads to a 403 page – Federico Apr 29 '21 at 12:55
@Federico it works for me, in fact, I have linked to what the museum describes as a permalink – Avery Apr 29 '21 at 13:04
@Federico It might be caused by the page being HTTP-only. Browsers might try to connect through HTTPS which is not going to succeed. – user31389 Apr 29 '21 at 13:26
it might work for you also because you might have it in cache. both FF and chrome return 403, and there is no indication of an attempt at using https. and 403 is a forbidden response from the server – Federico Apr 29 '21 at 13:29
@Federico: I just loaded "this exact model of Andalusian outdoor lamp" fresh (never visited the site before, only read this question for the first time two minutes ago), and it works (as http, in modern Chromium-based Edge if it matters). The link for "Andalusian indoor lighting" failed on first load, succeeded on second attempt. This question is now showing up in the "Hot Network Questions" sidebar across StackOverflow/StackExchange, which may be creating enough traffic to those sites to cause them to exceed bandwidth or data caps intermittently; the link is valid, just potentially flaky. – ShadowRanger Apr 29 '21 at 17:15
If I remember, I'll try again in Firefox when I get home (stupid work computer with its locked down browsers), but 403 would be an error on the server side unrelated to the browser, which probably just means their hosting or anti-DDoS provider or whatever is flaking out and responding inappropriately. – ShadowRanger Apr 29 '21 at 17:19
@ShadowRanger I get 403 even if I try to visit http://islamicart.museumwnf.org/ maybe is a geoip thing? – Federico Apr 29 '21 at 20:30
@Federico: Must be. Ironic, as "museumwnf" is short for "Museum with No Frontiers"; apparently the topics have no frontiers, but visitors must be from within well-defined frontiers. It definitely works for me from home in Firefox, where again, it's the first time I ever visited it so caches aren't involved, so Americans can reach it; don't know what geoip blocks they may have instituted. – ShadowRanger Apr 29 '21 at 22:46

What fueled the street lights in 13th-century Cordoba?

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