Lost History – Is The Queen descended from the Prophet Mohammed?

In 1965, Malcolm Muggeridge interviewed the poet Robert Graves for the BBC. He began their conversation by asking Graves how his mixed ancestry had affected his outlook. Graves responded, “….everybodys’ ancestry is mixed. In fact, I can trace my descent, as the Queen does, to the Prophet Mohammed.” Muggeridge’s brief and nervous reaction to this exciting declaration is comparable to the polite recoiling of a person who has been told a disconcerting conspiracy theory by someone they admire rather than respect.

However, in 1986, Burke’s Peerages also asserted that Her Majesty’s genealogy does include a connection to the founder of Islam. The publishing editor of the journal on royal pedigree wrote to the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, to warn her that increased security was still necessary to protect the monarch from terrorist threats despite the Queen’s descent from the Prophet.

He went on to say in his letter to Thatcher; “it is little known by the British people that the blood of Mohammed flows in the veins of the Queen. However, all Muslim religious leaders are proud of this fact.” The Grand Mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa, also corroborated the claim.

So how, if at all, is Elizabeth II descended from the Prophet? The link is tenuous but tantalising. The connection is said to be via an 11th-century Spanish princess called Isabel, who, before her conversion to Roman Catholicism, was called Zaida of Seville. Isabel was allegedly born to a wine-drinking caliph who owed his status to his suspected descent from the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima. Zaida apparently married the son of the King of Seville, who served his father as Taifa of Cordoba.

She supposedly fled the Muslim kingdom of Seville when it was overrun by the Almoravids, a Berber dynasty who hailed from North Africa. She found sanctuary across the border in Castille under the protection of King Alfonso, whom, after her conversion to Catholicism, she eventually married. It was then that she adopted the name Isabel. The former Muslim princess bore Alfonso a son, Sancho, who entered the Castillian line of succession but was killed in battle before the death of his father.

It is through the marriage of one of Sancho’s great-granddaughters to Richard of Conisburgh, Earl of Cambridge, that the Queen can trace her ancestry to the last great Prophet in the Abrahamic tradition. Establishing descent from the Prophet is often deemed a prerequisite to assuming sovereign power in the Islamic world. The Queen owes her origins to the numerous indiscretions of many famous conquerors, reformers, monarchs and ministers. Still, none exerted an influence as global as Mohammed or could claim to have transformed the world to quite the same extent.

Scholars have questioned the connection between Mohammed and Zaida of Seville, but other Spanish sources of the time posit her pedigree and appear to verify her illustrious lineage. Her epitaph reads, “Queen Isabel, wife of King Alfonso, daughter of Aben-abeth, king of Seville; previously called Zayda”. If her story of conversion is true, it does not necessarily mean her ties to Mohammed are definite, but the enticing probability nevertheless persists. If it is the case, the Queen’s standing as the embodiment of a nation could now incorporate extra cultural dimensions.

Though proving a connection to ancient kin is usually troublesome and generally unremarkable (geneticists believe up to 16 million people alive today are descended from Ghengis Khan and a huge number of Europeans can establish a verifiable link to Charlemagne), if emphasised, it could provide a new dynamic between the British monarchy and adherents to Islam.