MADRID/GRANADA: More than five centuries after the Muslims were expelled from Spain, the call to prayer is again echoing from a minaret in Granada.

The inauguration of the city’s first large mosque nearly three months ago has accelerated what is becoming known as the return of Islam to Granada, once a Muslim stronghold and the capital of Spain’s last Moorish kingdom.

“Hundreds of Muslims are flocking to daily prayers at the mosque,” says Malik Abder Rahman Ruiz, president of the Islamic Community of Spain, one of the main Islamic currents in the Andalusian city.

Ruiz’ community runs the 4.5-million-dollar mosque, which was mostly paid for by a sponsor in the United Arab Emirates.

Until now, Granada’s roughly 20,000 Muslims had only met at makeshift mosques in basements or garages, but the white mosque now graces a hill in the old Moorish quarter of the Albaicin.

The mosque fittingly faces the reddish citadel of the Alhambra, the seat of Moorish sultans whose defeat by Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 put a definitive end to 800 years of Muslim rule in large parts of Spain.

Granada’s last Moorish king, Boabdil, was said to have cried when handing over the keys of the city, sealing the Christian Reconquest and the end of the brilliant Arab-Berber civilization in the region then known as al-Andalus.

Moorish Spain was a beacon of science and culture in medieval Europe, setting an example for the largely peaceful coexistence of Moslems, Christians and Jews.

After the Reconquest, Jews were expelled in 1492 and all Muslims in 1609.

Most of the new Muslims among Granada’s 270,000 residents are Moroccan students and migrant workers, but up to 1,500 Spaniards have also converted to Islam in an attempt to reclaim their Moorish heritage.

Students of Islam sit at the study centre of the new mosque, the large gardens of which are becoming an attraction for the local people and for tourists from Muslim countries.—dpa