The Abbasid court of Baghdad was the cultural model Cordoba imitated

Evidence

‘Abd al-Rahmân II set out to make his provincial capital, Córdoba, into a new Damascus or Baghdad: he built up his palace complex, minted coins, imitated the style and ceremony of the ‘Abbasid court, imported luxury items, and patronized scholars, poets, and musicians from the East. He brought from Baghdad the poet and singer Ziryab, who became so popular and so widely imitated as a fashion plate, that one historian has compared the impact of his arrival to that of the Beatles in the United States. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 495

Categorization

• CANDY: The Ziryab-as-Beatles comparison is a light, memorable hook for conveying how one eastern performer transformed Andalusian fashion and music.
• ADDENDUM: The imitation of distant court culture resonates with my piece on how prestige flows from distant metropoles (Seneca on silk, Ibn Battuta) — here we see a whole court literally restyling itself after Baghdad’s ceremony.
• XREF: connects to: Cordoba House was deliberately named after a model of Muslim-Christian-Jewish coexistence.