THE muezzin’s cry of “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) will return this week to Granada after an absence of 500 years when the first mosque is opened since the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula.

The traditional calling of the faithful to prayer will ring out on Thursday from the minaret of the Great Mosque of Granada, set atop the historic Moorish quarter of Albaicin. From here Arab dignitaries and envoys will enjoy an unrivalled vista of the Alhambra, the palace of the last caliph of al-Andalus and an architectural jewel that draws hundreds of thousands of tourists to the city every year.

It was 511 years ago that King Boabdil of Granada and his court left the Alhambra and paused at the Pass of the Moor’s Sigh, before leading the last remnants of Spanish Islam into exile across the Strait of Gibraltar. According to legend, Boabdil’s mother, Aisha, rebuked her son by saying: “Weep like a woman for what you could not defend like a man!” So ended nearly 800 years of Muslim rule in Spain.

Al-Jazeera television and other Arab satellite channels will broadcast the Dhuhur prayers live at 2.30pm on Thursday.

Abdul Haqq Salaberria, a spokesman for the Islamic community in Spain, said: “This will be a political act, because it is the first mosque to be opened by Spanish Muslims in over 500 years.”

Abdul Haqq was born a Basque Roman Catholic, along with 500 other Spanish Muslims, but he rejects the title of convert. “I was born a Muslim, it’s just that I wasn’t conscious of it until I was in my late twenties,” he said. “The period of Catholic Spain is actually very brief over the long view of history. When the first Muslims arrived here from Africa via Gibraltar they were few. The majority of Muslims in Spain were natives who converted freely and naturally.

“After 800 years there was an ethnic cleansing which erased Islam from the face of Spain. Only the beauty of the Alhambra and the Mosque of Córdoba (which was converted into a Catholic cathedral) saved them from destruction.”

The new Great Mosque of Granada is also a building of subtle beauty, with design references to the Cordoba mosque and al-Aqsa Mosque of Jerusalem.

The story of its construction is long and troubled, but its inauguration suggests that Spain — especially Andalucia — is coming to terms with its Moorish heritage, as waves of new immigrants wash up on its shores from Morocco and the Muslim population rises inexorably.

The site was bought 22 years ago, when it was still a small plot of farmland squeezed between a convent and a church on the crest of the Albaicin, the last Muslim quarter of Granada before the Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel reneged on their treaty with Boabdil to guarantee religious freedom in Spain.

According to Abdul Haqq, when the city council realised that Muslims intended to build a mosque, the land was redefined for residential use only, blocking construction of a public or religious building.

There followed a nine-year legal battle, which finally led to the erection of a life-sized model of the proposed minaret on the site in order to assess its visual impact and invite comment from the public. The minaret prompted complaints from conservative Catholics nationwide and tensions grew in Granada, leading to further delays. Graffiti appeared, urging the city’s estimated 15,000 Muslims to “go home”, but defenders of Spain’s new Constitution came out in favour of the project.

Then, just as building was about to commence — with a smaller minaret — Roman ruins were discovered at the site. Another two-year delay was ordered while they were excavated and the mosque was modified again to preserve the ruins.

Building finally got under way in 1998, immediately after the Muslim fast of Ramadan.

“The design went through ten revisions,” Abdul Haqq said. “All this time there was an empty church standing unused right next to our site and we said: ‘Okay, let us convert that back into the mosque which it originally was.’

“All of a sudden the church was restored and it is now used for weddings at weekends, so we Muslims saved it!” The Convent of Saint Thomas, home to a cloistered order of nuns, has increased the height of the dividing wall, studding the top with broken glass and crowning it with a fence.

The mosque ignites unspoken passions among the people of Granada, but the mayor, a member of Spain’s ruling centre-right party, will attend the celebrations.

A previous mayor from the same party who lived in the Albaicin publicly opposed the mosque on aesthetic grounds, but he no longer resides in Granada.

A long-term resident of the city, who did not wish to be named, said: “We are not particularly liberal or tolerant people here and many of us do not like the idea of a mosque which carries such a symbolic message.

“Nevertheless, the debate has gone on for so long and there are absolutely no legal grounds for opposing it. For some, of course, it fills them with foreboding about the Moors returning to reclaim Spain, but hopefully people will realise that we live in the 21st century and it may even act as a beacon for good neighbourliness, an example for the Middle East.”

Putting the final touches to the mosque yesterday, Abdul Haqq said that the minaret had been tested already. “It was very emotional, some Muslim tourists came running, they could not believe that here was a mosque, in Granada of all places! “The call to prayer is undoubtedly going to be a tourist attraction, because even though it is so normal in the rest of the Muslim world it will have a special sound here.

“We hope that Spaniards will understand when we say that this will be a new centre for Islamic Europe, that we do not want to reconquer al- Andalus but we do want recognition.”

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