arches; a feature which would go on to be highly influential in the subsequent development of Moorish architecture. The mihrab opens in the wall at the middle of this maqsura, while two doors flank it on either side. The door on the right, Bab al-Sabat ("door of the sabat"), gave access to a passage which originally led to the sabat, an elevated passage over the street which connected the mosque to the caliph's palace. The door on the left, Bab Bayt al-Mal ("door of the treasury"), led to a treasury located behind the qibla wall (now partly occupied by the cathedral's treasury). The mihrab consists of a horseshoe arch leading to a small heptagonal chamber covered by a shell-shaped cupola above a ring of polylobed blind arches and carvings. This is the earliest known mihrab that consists of an actual room rather than just a niche in the wall. Under the horseshoe arch are two pairs of short marble columns with capitals – each pair featuring one red column and one dark green column – that are believed to have been reused from the mihrab of Abd al-Rahman II's earlier expansion of the mosque. The mihrab is, in turn, surrounded by a typical arrangement of radiating arch decoration and a rectangular framing or alfiz, which is also seen in the design of the earlier western mosque gate of Bab al-Wuzara (the Puerta de San Esteban today) and was likely also present in the design of the mosque's first mihrab. Above this alfiz is another decorative blind arcade of polylobed arches. The lower walls on either side of the mihrab are panelled with marble carved with intricate arabesque vegetal motifs, while the spandrels above the arch are likewise filled with carved arabesques. The voussoirs of the arch, however, as well as the rectangular alfiz frame and the blind arcade above it, are all filled with gold and glass mosaics. Those in the voussoirs and the blind arcade form vegetal and floral motifs, while those in the alfiz and in smaller bands at the springs of the arch contain Arabic inscriptions in Kufic script. The two doors on either side of the mihrab section are also framed by similar, but less elaborate, mosaic decoration. The three bays of the maqsura area (the space in front of the mihrab and the spaces in front of the two side doors) are each covered by