Abd ar-Rahman II
The city in its present location was founded with the name Madinat Mursiyah ( 'city of Murcia') in AD 825 by Abd ar-Rahman II, who was then the emir of Córdoba. Umayyad planners, taking advantage of the course of the river Segura, created a complex network of irrigation channels that made the town's agricultural existence prosperous. In the 12th century the traveller and writer Muhammad al-Idrisi described the city of Murcia as populous and strongly fortified. After the fall of the Caliphate of Córdoba in 1031, Murcia passed under the successive rules of the powers seated variously at Almería and Toledo, but finally became capital of its own kingdom with Ibn Tahir (). After the fall of the Almoravide empire, Ibn Mardanis made Murcia the capital of a new independent kingdom. At this time, Murcia was a very prosperous city, famous for its ceramics, exported to Italian towns, as well as for silk and paper industries, the first in Europe. The coinage of Murcia was considered as model in all the continent. The mystic Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) and the poet Ibn al-Jinan (d.1214) were born in Murcia during this period.