Tāshfīn, and the emir al-Muʿtamid was exiled to Aghmat, near Marrakech, in Morocco, where he would die soon after, lamenting his own failures in his last poems. In 1091, Seville was captured by the Almoravid troops of Yūsuf b. Under the rule of Zaida’s father-in-law, al-Muʿtamid, Seville experienced a “golden age” of culture, attracting famous poets from all corners of the Islamic Mediterranean, including Ibn Hamdis, and even al-Muʿtamid himself. This was a momentous change, since Islamic Spain had been ruled by the Umayyad dynasty for about 300 years.
By the 1040s, the ʿAbbādids supplanted Cordoba as the most prominent in al-Andalus. While the accepted story is that Zaida was the daughter of the emir, recent studies have shown she most likely was an outsider, who gained access into the family’s inner circle through this marriage. Zaida enjoyed the many luxuries of the court of the ʿAbbādid dynasty of Seville through her marriage to al-Fath al-Maʾmūn, the son of the emir al-Muʿtamid. Column of King al-Muʿtamid in the Alcazar of Seville.
In fact, Zaida and Alfonso VI lived in a world which allowed little reflection on these modern debates. Spain was either a land of tolerance, better known as “convivencia”, or it was a theatre of war and inter-religious conflict. The story of the marriage union between Zaida and Alfonso VI not only raises questions about race, ethnicity and cultural belonging, but also adds nuance to explanations of the contact between Islam and the Christian West.Ī number of recent books and articles have presented the contact between “Las Tres Culturas” – as the Abrahamic faiths are commonly referred to in Spain – in one of two mutually exclusive ways. Lebedel:īe that as it may, there are valuable lessons to be learned from the Queen’s Spanish ancestor. ‘Conviviencia’: there was much intermingling of the faiths in early medieval Spain. The mysteries surrounding Zaida’s origins, the key to the puzzle, make it hard to sustain her potential right to rule over the realm of Islam. Sadly, the theory of the Queen’s Hashemite lineage is too good to be true. Respected experts and commentators such as Burke’s Peerage and Ali Gomaa, the former Grand Mufti of Egypt, have suggested that Zaida was the offspring of al-Muʿtamid, ruler of Seville and a descendant of the daughter of the Prophet, Fāṭima and her husband ʿĀlī.Īs a member of the Hashemite family, the descendants of Fāṭima and ʿĀlī, the Queen would count as relatives, among others, the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or the Aga Khan IV, Prince Shah Karim Al Hussaini, a close friend of the current Royal family. This lineage has been of recent interest both in the UK and in the Middle East, as it purportedly proves a family relationship between Queen Elizabeth II and the Prophet Muhammad himself. Thus the legacy of Islamic Spain – better known as al-Andalus – found its way into the Plantagenet royal court. Richard’s second son Edward took the throne in 1461. Their grandson, Richard, Duke of York, led a rebellion against King Henry VI which developed into the Wars of the Roses. From their offspring descended Isabel Pérez of Castile, who in the 14th century was sent to England to marry Edmund Duke of York, son of King Edward III of England. Zaida’s bloodline reached the English shores through her engagement to Alfonso VI, king of León-Castile. Zaida, a Muslim princess living in 11th-century Seville, is one of the most extraordinary ancestors of the British royal family.
0 kommentar(er)
