Gordon, Gordon Banks wrote: >I agree completely. We know we all descend from people living in >Biblical times, the problem is to find the links, and we have to start >at our end. And, we may never find them. Very few documents from >ancient times have survived, and very few of our ancestors were literate >anyhow. In my opinion, our best chances lie through the mixing of >Iberian Muslims and Christians. We may yet find some links there. >Islamic culture was much more literate and much more has been preserved >of those days. (incidentally, the link to Zaida Denia in Royalty for >Commoners is in the opinion of most if not all of the experts, false.) > You may be right about possible Iberian connections. As for Zaida, it didn't take an expert to notice that RFC had her supposed mother Zaida born a year after she was. Then too, it turns out Zaida was not daughter of Muhammad II, but rather was the daughter of his deceased son, so Stuart went to all that work for nothing. Lastly, early Portuguese records turned up the fact that Teresa de Castile had as a lady in waiting in her court, Gontrode Munoz, a person she identifies as (trans) 'sister of my mother, Ximina Munoz'. Then Teresa's daughter Sancha appears in a charter donating lands she says she acquired (trans) 'of my grandmother Donna Ximena Munoz and of my mother (her daughter) queen Donna Teresa.' So both Teresa and her daughter Sancha seemed to know who Teresa's mother was. That was perhaps the biggest gaffe in that book. Jim