Following the death of British Queen Elizabeth II on September 8 at the age of 96, various statements emerged, reinvigorating a long-debated claim that the monarch had ancestral links to Prophet Muhammad, the founding leader of Islam. After tracing her family tree back 43 generations, historians think the Queen is a descendant of Islam’s founder, as per some reports.
According to the claim, the British monarch is a great descendant of Prophet Muhammad. Her ancestors have been traced back for centuries, and there are doubts concerning Elizabeth’s probable ancestry from a Muslim princess named Zaida, as well as Zaida’s own origins and offspring.
The claim publicly appeared in 2018 when a Moroccan newspaper claimed to have traced the ancestry of Queen Elizabeth back to the Prophet. A March 2018 report in the Moroccan daily Al-Ousboue reiterated assertions made by Harold B Brooks-Baker, publishing director of Burke’s Peerage Partnership, claiming the queen is the Prophet’s 43rd direct descendant through Muhammad’s daughter Fatimah.
According to their study, Elizabeth II’s ancestors trace back to the 14th century Earl of Cambridge, via mediaeval Muslim Spain, and to Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter. Although some historians doubt the allegation, genealogy records from early-medieval Spain support it, and it has also been validated by Ali Gomaa, Egypt’s former grand mufti.
In 1986, Burke’s publishing director, Harold B Brooks-Baker, wrote to then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, requesting enhanced protection for the royal family after this. “The royal family’s direct descent from the prophet Mohammed cannot be relied upon to protect the royal family forever from Moslem terrorists,” Baker wrote to the then British Prime Minister.
He said, “It is little known by the British people that the blood of Mohammed flows in the veins of the queen. Recognizing the relationship would be a surprise to many. However, this is a fact that all Moslem religious leaders are proud of.”
Elizabeth’s lineage with Muhammad was first formally mentioned in Burke’s Peerage research. It was said that the Queen is descended from Zaida, a Muslim princess who escaped Seville in the eleventh century and later became a Christian. Zaida was the fourth wife of King Al-Mu’tamid ibn Abbad of Seville. He had a son named Sancho via her; in the eleventh century, a descendant of Sancho wed the Earl of Cambridge.
Also, according to the Moroccan newspaper article authored by Abdel-Hamid Al-Awni, Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn Abbad, the king of Seville in the 11th century, was a direct descendant of the Prophet through Fatimah. In 1023, Al-Qasim established his own dynasty, the Abbasids, and became king of Seville in al-Andalus. Zaida was one of his daughters.
The Muslim princess escaped to the court of Monarch Alfonso VI, the Spanish king of Leon, Castille, and Galicia, during an invasion of the Abbasid empire by the Almoravids. She adopted the Roman Catholic faith, changed her name to Isabella, and gave birth to Sancho, a boy who was the ancestor of Richard of Conisbrough, the third earl of Cambridge, whose descendant later was Edward IV, King of England, and the bloodline then runs through James V, the King of Scotts, and Mary, the Queen of Scotts whose son James later became the King of England. Sancho was the grandson of Alfonso VI of Castille.
It is notable here that though not officially confirmed, the claim, as per many reports, is not a random hoax, and can be regarded as ‘plausible’. Most of Europe’s royal families are related to each other and at one time, the Spanish royals were had marital and blood relations with Islamic royals, mostly as the Islamic caliphate of Umayyads had ruled over many parts of Spain.
