I will also hold up my hands to my exploration of Palma (Madina) under the emirs. I have based my geography and descriptions of the city on maps, a model and description of the city to be found in the museum at Bellver castle, and personal wanderings, but the Al-Mudaina palace I have played with. My depiction of it will probably be far from the truth. There have been studies of the history of the complex, which is still a summer palace of the Spanish royalty, but the existing form of the place will be far removed from what stood in 1199. My depiction is largely fictional, including a few elements I visited and saw, and partially drawn from the later structures on the spot. I do have to say that exploring the corridors and twisting ways of parts of the palace gave rise to my description of Arnau’s journey through the place. For a historical investigation of the Al-Mudaina, along with the Gumāra and other Moorish fortifications and the world in which they sat, I would recommend Goffriller’s thesis for the University of Exeter, ‘The Castles of Mallorca’. There come points in every novelist’s planning and execution where he or she has to weigh the balance between invention and historiography. Sometimes the balance has to tip one way or the other in order to make a book into a story rather than a factual treatise.
And one tiny and interesting aside: I relate the old notion that cats have multiple lives in my final scenes, coming from the mouth of the Lion himself. I looked into this, and the notion that a cat has not nine, but six lives, is an Arabic one.
As you’ll have noted from this short explanation, independent Mallorca was not to last long. Abd-allāh ibn Ishāq took control of the taifa as the last of the Almoravid line in 1187. He lasted until 1203 when, despite all efforts at defence and diplomacy, and at least one failed Almohad attempt at control, the caliphate finally succeeded in taking control of Mallorca. It remained nominally a taifa – the last taifa – but its ruler was a governor on behalf of the Almohad caliph and not an emir himself. The last emir died in 1203. The rabid Almohads would rule the islands less than three decades before the Christians came to conquer. I wonder, in light of my research, how many Moors might have considered this a blessing at the time. Later, things would change, of course. In the centuries to come, Christian Spain under rulers like Ferdinand and Isabella was far from a tolerant paradise. In fact there are echoes, in post-conquest Christian attitudes, of the zealotry of the Almohads. But what you have witnessed in this book is the very last flowering of tolerant Muslim rule in Iberia. Without wanting to present spoilers of what is to come for the series, I will explore a little of what followed. The disastrous Christian loss at Alarcos in 1195 set the Christians back many years and almost halted the reconquest. It was appalling. And its loss gave the Almohads the upper hand, putting lands like Aragon in a position where they could not afford to ally with Mallorca. In 1212 there would be another battle (to which I will come in due course). Las Navas de Tolosa is the flip side. It is where fortunes would be reversed. From that day on, amid the myriad Almohad corpses, Moorish Iberia was on the run. It would take almost half a millennium yet, but after 1212, the decline had begun.
Again, I will come to this in future books, though in the meantime there are new challenges for Arnau and his compatriots. Book three – City of God – will see our favourite young Templar heading east, to that great sandy crucible where legends were made, on crusade. The future of Rourell hangs in the balance as always, with enemies surrounding it, as unpopular as a religious house could be.
Before I sign off, I am not putting together a separate acknowledgements section for this book, but I feel the distinct need to shout to the heavens my thanks to the excellent سليلة اﻷنوار (Salilat Lanwar), a brilliant Moroccan teacher whose help honed the Arabic in this book, given my own vast gulf in understanding of the tongue. And also my heartiest thanks to Chris Verwijmeren, whose knowledge of medieval archery is unsurpassed, to the point where rather than correcting me on individual points in a scene, he just helped me rewrite the scene entire. Thirdly a thank you to the fabulous Isabel Picornell Garcia on Alderney, whose fascinating insights into Mallorca and Palma led me to including her ancestor in the book. Finally of course, to Michael Bhaskar at Canelo for some cracking suggestions in the content edit.
These are really the best of people.
Simon Turney, September 2018
First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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Copyright © S.J.A. Turney, 2018
The moral right of S.J.A. Turney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781911420637
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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