Burke's Peerage:
Queen Elizabeth II Descended from the Prophet Muhammad
I was surprised that the writers of comments over at Salon.com did not know the below. It is common knowledge to anyone interested in genealogy.
I know that it is hard for people invested in a hard East/ West dichotomy to imagine that the icon of Western civilization, the British royal family, has Arab Muslim antecedents (along with a host of other nationalities of course.) But it does.
The Greater Mediterranean got all mixed up over millennia. Most Sicilians (i.e. most Italian-Americans) also have Arab Muslim ancestors. It works the other way around, too. It is obvious that a lot of Egyptians, Lebanese and Jordanians have descent from the Christian European Crusaders.
This is connected to just pointing out that having ancestors named Hussein is more common among Europeans and Americans than is usually realized. Elizabeth II can't be descended from the Prophet Muhammad without also being descended from his grandson, the original Husayn / Hussein, since that is the line of descent of the Sayyids.
'United Press International
October 10, 1986
MOSLEMS IN BUCKINGHAM PALACE
Mixed in with Queen Elizabeth's blue blood is the blood of the Moslem prophet Mohammed, according to Burke's Peerage, the geneological guide to royalty. The relation came out when Harold B. Brooks-Baker, publishing director of Burke's, wrote Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to ask for better security for the royal family. ''The royal family's direct descent from the prophet Mohammed cannot be relied upon to protect the royal family forever from Moslem terrorists,'' he said. Probably realizing the connection would be a surprise to many, he added, ''It is little known by the British people that the blood of Mohammed flows in the veins of the queen. However, all Moslem religious leaders are proud of this fact.''
Brooks-Baker said the British royal family is descended from Mohammed through the Arab kings of Seville, who once ruled Spain. By marriage, their blood passed to the European kings of Portugal and Castille, and through them to England's 15th century King Edward IV. '
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/28/2008 06:54:00 PM
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15 Comments:
Well they sure don't act like family, Oh wait I'll take that back not like my family. I remember reading this then thanks for bring it back up. The cradle of life the middle east?
jo6pac
Wait...they're not Cheney's cousin too are they?
Burke's Peerage is quite capable, and quite anxious, to find appropriate blood relatives for all billionaires.
Wait.. Wait..
With my blue eyes and fair hair, my ancestors were from Africa.. Isn't it the case the first human ancestors were discovered in Africa ?
Dear Pr. Cole, although it's often fruitful and interesting to change from point of view and see things from another angle, here your love for paradox is leading you too far.
This raises the following interesting question: her grandson, Prince Harry, is in Afghanistan, fighting Muslims. Would they lay off him because of his "blood-line"?
Allegedly, most people of European descent are also descended from the Prophet, either thru the various European royal houses or more informally.
Because your number of ancestors doubles roughly every generation, most Europeans have a common ancestor or two dating back as recently as 600 years ago. This is why you hear about this or that US president being Queen Elizabeth's distant cousin.
Just a correction:
The Prophet's line continued through both of his grandsons, al-Hasan and al-Husayn. So it isn't necessarily the case that someone descended from the Prophet would also be descended from al-Husayn. However, considering the frequent intermarriages between the Hasanid and Husaynid lines, that is certainly very likely to be the case--especially since al-Hasan's son Hasan II married al-Husayn's daughter Fatima.
Credit to Juan Cole for drawing attention to the apparent line of descent from Muhammad to Queen Elizabeth II. This historical nugget is, I think, little known in Britain itself, despite that country's legendary preoccupation with national legacy and heritage.
Looking beyond the monarchy, the ultimate if strongly mediated source of the offical English state religion in the teachings of a western Asian man, most likely known to his friends and original followers as Rabbi Yeshua (or Joshua), should be enough to dissolve what Juan rightly terms the "hard East/West dichotomy" of more recent times. But of course it need in fact do nothing of the sort, notwithstanding the welcome increased humility of some western christians concerning the roots of their salvationist creed.
It is quite easy to dismiss crude "us/them" polarities as naive mental images of imagined transhistorical national or civilizational essences. Up to a point that is precisely what they are. Yet the fact that such dualities can contribute to, as well as justify, appalling acts indicates how these ideological artefacts can become devastating material forces within history. That is particularly the case where the duality overlays and interpenetrates with geopolitical and other social fault lines.
The more the waves of mixing, blending and mutual influence that recur across known history and prehistory become common knowledge, the better. Such understanding can play a part in overcoming the at least latent brutalities of reified collective egoisms. Most obviously this applies to overt ethnocentric/racist hostility with its direct victims. But equally it is a challenge to more genteel scholarly banalities celebrating and promoting one dimensional "clashes of civilization".
We need more paradigm-dissolving gems like the tale of the Queen and Muhammad. It is tempting to say, we need anything that will help break the spell.
DavidB (London)
Thanks for debunking this nonsense about Barack Obama's name by showing the foolishness of those who want to suggest that he is a crypto Muslim or worse. You have shown the folly of these fools.
Charles Fles
So Christiane, the UPI cite from 1986 wasn't enough for you? Are you accusing Professor Cole of time-travelling back the 1986, bribing his way onto the UPI staff, and typing up that article under a fake byline? (And if you think he just made it up, why don't you go check Lexis-Nexis and find out?)
Mr Cole, again, and elegant and simple point about the interconnectivity of our world.
Christiane's point seemed to be that if we go back far enough, all of could be - in fact are - related. But you can find blue-eyed Africans today, who have had blue-eyed ancestors there long even before the Arabs arrived, as any one can tell you who has traveled in Berber territory. An Irish writer named wrote an entertaining book called Atlantean positing that Berber's actually originally settled Ireland. The book is also full of many many other fascinating connections between North Africa and Ireland.
Peace
G.S.
http://thegreenshade.blogspot.com
Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you, so let's just praise the Lord.
Am I the only one who spent more than one evening poring over my 1880 high school textbook on British history -- it is over 800 pages -- that presents more complexity, analysis and fact than any college discussion of the same subject I ever heard.
It's a fantastic book, presenting the scientific analysis of it's time most dispassionately, and spends the first couple hundred pages on the waves of immigration and conquest before 1066. It also had several fold-out charts of the descent of British monarchy in various eras, and if the claim to the descent of Mohammed is being alleged, then there are several big breaks in the continuity of the line after Edward IV, I'm not going to look up the dates, but the victory of the Tudor line in the late 1400's, Elizabeth's death without kids in 1603 and the entry of the Scottish line, and then the Glorious Revolution of 1688 with the introduction of William and Mary, and then the descent to their distant cousins the German Hanover/Windsor line (the name conveniently changed during WWI.)
So it may be that the same multiplication effect that has been described gets Mohammed into the line of Elizabeth II and her consort, another German/Greek princeling type, but I think you'd have to look long and hard to find a link from the Arabs of 12th Century Spain to brazen Welsh adventurer Henry Tudor, known to us as Henry the Seventh.
Anonymous, 10:55 AM:
A line from Edward IV to the House of Hanover:
1. Edward IV=Elizabeth Woodville
2. Elizabeth of York=Henry VII
3. Margaret=James IV Stuart King of Scotland
4. James V King of Scotland=Mary of Guise
5. Mary Stuart Queen of Scotland=Henry Stuart Lord Darnley
6. James I Stuart King of England=Anne, Pricess of Denmark
7. Elizabeth=Fredrik I of Bavaria
8. Sophia von Wittelsbach=Ernest August
9. George I
This all rather reminds me of the story about the letter on Precedence allegedly written by the Garter Herald at Arms Office. So far as I recall it goes:
"The Aga Khan is held by his followers to be a direct descendant of God.
An Engish Duke takes precedence"
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