The Cordoba Mosque was built during the period of the Umayyad emirate in Iberian Peninsula. The land the Muslims conquered from the Visigothic kingdom, starting with the first invasion in 711, was named al-Andalus and its capital was Cordoba.

The emirate was declared the Caliphate of Cordoba in the tenth century by Abd al-Rahman III, establishing its independence from the Baghdad Caliphate.

The princes of Cordoba thus challenged the Abbasids as the divinely-ordained rulers of the Muslim world, and their mosque was part of that challenge.-

Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Art and Architecture

The period of the Cordoba Caliphate ended in 1031 and the entire territory was divided into separate kingdoms called taifas. The prominence of the city of Cordoba remained through the period of the taifas and subsequently and that of the Almohad and Almoravid dominations. As part of the Reconquista, King Ferdinand III conquered Cordoba in 1236 , claiming it for his kingdom of Castille. The King had the entire mosque consecrated as Cordoba’s Cathedral and since then, it has not been accessible to the Muslim population of the city. Renovations took place which resulted in the insertion of a Catholic Cathedral within the original mosque.