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Chapter 5 explores the codification of antiquarian writing in Spain in its original form as expressed by Ambrosio de Morales in Las Antigüedades de las ciudades de España (1575), and particularly it considers the consequences of the inclusion of Córdoba Mosque and Madinat al-Zahra in this commentary. The terms of the description and Morales’ use of antiquarian tools are analyzed. In addition, the chapter deals with the interesting methodological debate Morales’ writings gave rise (Pedro Díaz de Ribas, Gregorio López Madera, Alonso Morgado, among others) to around the use of antiquarian tools in formal historical research of Islamic monuments: literary sources, epigraphy, and archaeological analyses of the materials and building techniques (stones, bricks, and mortar). Finally, the chapter deals with the conflictive relationship between the narratives on the Islamic antiquities of Spain, the antiquarian vocabulary and the classical canon.

Chapter 9 expounds on the martyr stories of pre-Islamic and Islamic times. Ambrosio de Morales’s recovery of Eulogius’ writings on the Córdoba Martyrs (1574) fixed the genre in Spain. After that, the history of that city’s mosque was associated to the memory of the martyrs (Martin de Roa and others). Conversely, narratives on Seville Giralda focused on the story of St Justa and St Rufina (Luis de Peraza, Pablo Espinosa, Rodrigo Caro, etc.). Finally, the invention of the Lead Books of Granada, which was related to the demolition of the former minaret of Granada’s Aljama, centred the whole of the subsequent local historiography in the memory of St Caecilius and other martyrs (Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza, Francisco Henríquez de Jorquera, and many others). A key element of this turn was the conversion of the Islamic buildings in archaeological evidences of the martyrdoms and the antiquity of these cities’ Christianity.

This introductory chapter opens with the case study of the amendments that the historian Ambrosio de Morales introduced in the manuscript version of his core book Las Antigüedades de las ciudades de España (1575) before sending it to print. The changes in the description of Córdoba Mosque reveal the conflictive status of Islamic architecture in the Spanish historical writing of the time. Upon this example the subject of Admiration and Awe is introduced through three angles: the connection of the topic of the interpretation of Islamic monuments to sixteenth and seventeenth historiographical building of Spanish national identity; a review of recent academic literature on the subject as well as on its possible connection to postcolonial theory; and a survey in the early modern historiographical distinction among medieval Islamic buildings and contemporary uses of Islamic architecture.

Chapter 1 explores the discourse underlying the medieval interpretation of Islamic monumental architecture. The interaction between the idea of buildings as trophies and the tension surrounding their potential destruction, conservation, and transformation offers a convenient framework for subsequent analysis of the strategies behind the appropriation of the surviving edifices. The chapter sets out the general background by way of a review of the writings of Ambrosio de Morales in relation to the Christian architectonic transformation of Córdoba Mosque. Then, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and his medieval idea of restoration as applied to the Christian conquest of Islamic Spain, as well as its consequences in the Humanist interpretation of Islamic buildings, are explained.