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Allah save the Queen, who is apparrently a descendant of Prophet Mohammed, at least this is what some Muslims think. Queen Elizabeth's alleged Muslim origins are making headlines again, reports The Economist. In the Middle East and North Africa several scholars and journalists are trying to figure out whether the 91-year-old monarch is truly of a Muslim ascendence.
Referring to an article by Moroccan newspaper Al-Ousboue published March in Casablanca, The Economist suggests that the Queen could be a cousin of King Mohammed VI, the king of Jordan, and «not to mention of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader».
According to the same source, the queen's origins were questioned years ago but with recent reports the story has made it to the surface again pushing many people to dig in the past in an attempt to find an answer to a really strange question. For Al-Ousboue for example, «the queen's bloodline runs through the Earl of Cambridge, in the 14th century, across medieval Muslim Spain, to Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter».
The most common story is the one based on Zaida's account, a Muslim princess who fled Seville in the 11th century for the Christian court of Alfonso VI of Castille. The British magazine indicates that Zaida «changed her name to Isabella, converted to Christianity and bore Alfonso a son, Sancho, one of whose descendants later married the Earl of Cambridge».
However, Zaida's origins are debatable. Some say that she is the daughter of Muatamid bin Abbad, the third and last ruler of the taifa of Seville in Al-Andalus and a member of the Abbadid dynasty and others say she married into his family.
In the Arab World, reactions varied regarding this mysterious account. Some have welcomed the idea calling the queen Sayyida or Sharifa while others took that to another level warning of a «perfidious plot to revive the British empire with help from Muslims», said The Economist.
