taf
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It is usually not worth the effort of refuting the levels upon levels of bullshit that appear in the crowdsourced internet genealogies (seriously, though - is it really so antithetical to have blank fields that one must invent precise birthdates and places for people only found in the historical record in a patronymic?), but I came across a new variation on the Aboazar situation discussed here in detail previously that is probably worth sorting out just to clarify how deep the rot goes. Both obsure and exotic, this line combines the inability of the average reader to independently evaluate it (if they even cared to do so) with a desparate desire it be true, an often unfortunate combination.
First, to summarize. In the 14th century, a Portuguese prince and genealogist recorded a family foundation legend (one of many in his work) that may have had its origin in a romantic chanson de geste. This during an era when Iberia families were inventing exotic origins for themselves. There are Iberian families claiming to descend from Ecgberht of Wessex, from an Armenian pilgrim, the son of a Byzantine emperor, the brother of a Holy Roman emperor, and Breton immigrants seemed particualrly popular for some reason.
Known as the Miragaia, this Arthurian-type tale tells a story of mid-10th-century king Ramiro II besieging a local Muslim landholder and through an absurd course of events, ending up in love with that man's sister (in later renderings called Ortiga), murdering his wife to marry her, and becoming father of Aboazar, the founder of the Portuguese noble Maya family.
I am not going to repeat the extensive discussion of this that can be seen in the archives. The takehome is that Aboazar de Maya matches the historical Abouazar/Abunazar Lovesendes, not Ramirez as would be the case were he son of king Ramiro. The Maya genealogist traced back as far as they could, then followed the common trope of deciding a man of (to them) obscure parentage must have really been the child of a king's illicit love, and this being on the al-Andalus frontier, via an inter-faith relationship (itself a common frontier romantic trope - the lost Cancion de los Siete Infantes de Sala and a chanson de Geste about William of Gellone likewise invoke such a liaison or marriage).
As is almost always the case, when faced with clear evidence refuting the desired traditional connections, the response has been various ad hoc 'repairs'. The most prominent of these was a paper by Portuguese academic historian Antonio Rei. I won't go into detail, but it is wishful thinking run wild, at odds with the onomastic forms of the time as well as common sense, but it concludes that Abouazar and Lovesendo are two names for the same person, a son of the 'rescued' ancestors, Ramiro II and Ortiga.
What have the online pedigrees made of all this? Just within the past few years, a fusion/confusion has been gaining popularity. It shows a line that runs as follows:
[Note: This is nonsense - do not enter it into your database]
Ramiro II married Onega ibn de Gaya
Lovesendo Ramirez married Zayra ibn Zayda, daughter of Zayda ibn Zayd
Aboazar Lovesendez
Let's break this down. First, who is Onega ibn de Gaya. It is Ortiga in disguise. Onega is a Pamplona name, not in use on the Portuguese frontier at this time, but it is a clear misreading of Ortega, a common variant given for the legend's Ortiga, itself a name found on the Portuguese frontier outside of this tale. The remainder of her supposed name 'ibn de Gaya' is itself nonsensical. Ibn means 'son of', not 'daughter of' (bint), so right from the start we have gender dysmorphia. 'De Gaya' is a toponymic, so the combined translation woudl be 'son (sic) of of (sic) Gaya', with Gaya being an alternative representation of the toponym embedded in the name of the legend, the Miragaia. It is all absurd, but clearly a reference to the heroine Ortiga of the Miragaia tradition.
How about Zayra ibn Zayda. In addition to the same gender problem, this is again a confused rendering of the same Ortiga. Zayra has no basis in any of the source material, seemingly having arisen through a typo ('r' is right-above 'd' on the standard keyboard) of the name given her father, Zayda. That in turn is a corruption of the legendary Ortiga's father, Çadan/Zadan, converted into a female name Zayda (i.e. Zaida - a derivative of the Arabic 'Sayyidah' - Lady) and probably not coincidentally a name associated with a historical instance of a Leonese royal having a lovechild by a Muslim noblewoman.
How about the male line. There isn't any historical source, medieval or modern, that makes Abouazar the grandson of Ramiro, via Lovesendo or anyone else. Those few renderings that give sources or reasoning cite the fact that Abouazar was son of Lovesendo for the first generation, then refer to Rei for the second generation, but this is classic 'pick and choose' use of sources since Rei did say that Lovesendo was son of Ramiro, but only because he said that Lovesendo was identical to Abouazar. You can't have it both ways - either Lovesendo was father of Abouazar, as is the clear implication of the historical record, or you naively follow Rei's revisionist 'rescue' and Lovesendo is the same as Abouazar, son of Ramiro. There is no way to make Lovesendo son of Ramiro independent of him being the same as Abouazar - well, there is a way, but it is called 'making it up'.
This confused reimagining of the pedigree also explains how we have doppelganger representations of Ortiga in both generations, one as Zayra, mother of Abouazar, simply swapping out the husband of legend for that of history as if that were reasonable, the other as per the legend as wife of Ramiro but then replacing the legend's son with Lovesendo because f a misapplication of Rei, both obscured by sloppy changes to both their names.
What are we left with as genealogists who care whether their pedigree matches reality?
Lovesendo (known definitively only from hhis son's patronymic)
Abouazar/Abu-Nazar Lovesendes
which is not nearly as desirable for the name-collectors out there.
(I don't mean here to be dismissive of Chico Doria's speculation about the true identity of Lovesendo - it is just outside of the scope of this already over-long post.)
taf