Medina Azahara (Arabic: مدينة الزهراء Madīnat az-Zahrā: literal meaning "the shining city") is the ruins of a vast, fortified Moorish medieval palace-city built by Abd-ar-Rahman III (912–961), the first Umayyad Caliph of Córdoba, and located on the western outskirts of Córdoba, Spain. It was a medieval Moorish town and the de facto capital of al-Andalus, or Muslim Spain, as the heart of the administration and government was within its walls.