Re: Marine Le Pen a Mohammad's descendant ?

[Denis Beauregard]

On Wed, 18 May 2022 02:24:42 -0700 (PDT), Olivier
<olivierg...@gmail.com> wrote in soc.genealogy.medieval:

>Dear All,
>
>One of the most famous French genealogists claims that Marine Le Pen is a descendant of the Prophet of Islam.
>Here is the lineage he proposes.

Where ?

>I leave it to you to criticize this work.

Not new !

https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2017/05/215808/marine-le-pen-descendent-prophet-muhammad

That said, the article indicates:

"Anne de Roquefeuil, is a descendant of King Louis VI, whose ancestors
were kings of England and Spain. The genealogist went on to explain
that one of these Spanish ancestors married a woman from the Omayyad
caliphate during the Muslim rule of Spain"

Sounds like a not-supported claim...


Denis

--
Denis Beauregard - généalogiste émérite (FQSG)
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[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

The original thread has been deleted. I wasn't aware Marine Le Pen had French noble ancestry.

[Peter Stewart]

I wasn't aware she had human ancestry.

Peter Stewart

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[taf]

On Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 2:50:35 PM UTC-7, Denis Beauregard wrote:
> On Wed, 18 May 2022 02:24:42 -0700 (PDT), Olivier
> <olivierg...@gmail.com> wrote in soc.genealogy.medieval:
>

> >One of the most famous French genealogists claims that Marine Le Pen is a descendant of the Prophet of Islam.
> >Here is the lineage he proposes.
>
> Where ?
>
> >I leave it to you to criticize this work.
>
> Not new !
>
> https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2017/05/215808/marine-le-pen-descendent-prophet-muhammad
>
> That said, the article indicates:
>
> "Anne de Roquefeuil, is a descendant of King Louis VI, whose ancestors
> were kings of England and Spain. The genealogist went on to explain
> that one of these Spanish ancestors married a woman from the Omayyad
> caliphate during the Muslim rule of Spain"
>
> Sounds like a not-supported claim...

Before getting to the meat of the claim, let's first dismiss the most obvious problem. The claim that Louis VI's ancestors were 'kings of England and Spain' is problematic. The first king of France for whom this claim can reasonably be made was Louis IX, and even calling his maternal line 'kings of Spain' is imprecise and anachronistic. It is not clear if they just misnumbered the relevant king and Le Pen actually descends from Louis IX, or if it really is Louis VI who is her closest royal ancestor and the genealogist has moved that king's great-granddaughter-in-law into an ancestor. The important connection is the link specifically to Castile.

Note that the relationship presented is intentionally vague. This same 'famous French genealogist' more than a decade ago used nearly the same phrasing to claim that Queen Elizabeth had Muslim ancestors, a claim picked up by several British newspapers. Note what he actually says. "one of these ancestors married a woman from the Omayyad caliphate" - he doesn't actually say that Louis descends from the marriage, only that he descends from a king who made the marriage. This sleight of hand is spelled out in the newspaper regurgitation of the Queen Elizabeth variant of the claim from years back, where it is explicitly stated that Elizabeth's ancestor Eleanor of Castile descended from Alfonso VI, and that the mother of Alfonso's only son was the Muslim Zaida, leaving the naive reader with the implication that Eleanor descended from this son of Alfonso and Zaida, even though it is known this was not the case. In this Le Pen version, it is clearly the same shell game being played, perhaps rendered less precise to make the it less obvious what is being claimed.

So, with two abslolute howlers in the same claim, this is either incredibly sloppy and amateurish genealogy, or more likely, intentional deception that basically amounts to trolling gullible and lazy newspapers with 'fake news'.

taf

[taf]

On Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 6:35:38 PM UTC-7, taf wrote:

> So, with two abslolute howlers in the same claim, this is either incredibly sloppy and amateurish genealogy, or more likely, intentional deception that basically amounts to trolling gullible and lazy newspapers with 'fake news'.
>

I should add that there are two further questionable 'facts', and a further implicit claim.

1) That Zaida actually married Alfonso VI is still hotly debated among Iberian scholars.
2) Zaida was not from the Omayyad caliphate, she was from the Taifa of Seville.
3) it is left implicit that 'a woman from the Omayyad caliphate' equates with 'a descendant of Muhammad', but even were she a member of the Taifa royal line (itself problematic) there is every reason to believe that their claimed line of descent from Muhammad was nothing but a political forgery.

So, not exactly receiving high scores for accuracy.

taf

[Olivier]

> The original thread has been deleted. I wasn't aware Marine Le Pen had French noble ancestry.

The problem is that iI have a have a picture of the book but I can't send this picture to this forum

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

Zaida was not daughter of the Emir of Seville Abul-Kasim. She was his daughter in law. However, it it has been speculated that she was daughter of his brother Abenabeth. Cousin marriages are common in Islamic cultures.

[taf]

On Thursday, May 19, 2022 at 6:21:08 PM UTC-7, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:

> Zaida was not daughter of the Emir of Seville Abul-Kasim. She was his daughter
> in law. However, it it has been speculated that she was daughter of his brother
> Abenabeth. Cousin marriages are common in Islamic cultures.

The most detailed al-Andalus source calls her the wife of Abbad al-Mu'tadid, son of Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn Abbad. A Christian chronicler calls her daughter of 'Abenabeth' (i.e. Ibn Abbad - 'son of Abbad', though possibly a more metaphorical, 'descendant of Abbad'). Some Iberian genealogists have tried to make the most of the historical record by viewing the conflicting sources as a 'blind man and the elephant' scenario, where all of the testimony is true but represents different isolated aspects of the same truth. The source saying she married al-Mu'tamid, son of ibn Abbad, is correct, but she was also daughter of a person named ibn Abbad, not the emir Abu al-Qasim but of his brother, who, obviously, was also ibn Abbad, and supporting this with the fact that first-cousin marriages are common in Islam. (I would note on the last that cultural practices among Muslims are not monolythic, but at least one documented Al-Andalus example comes to mind, though if the surviving record is any indication, Iberian Muslims preferred slave women to first cousins.)

From my perspective, this is trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I see no reason not to view this as a scenario where the Christian chronicler in naming 'Abenabeth' was referring to the person of this name known to be a proximate relative - Abu al-Qasim Muhammad, but simply, across the cultural and geographical divide, fell victim to 'daughter versus daughter-in-law' confusion.

taf

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

Thanks for the reply, Todd. You said in 2009 at https://groups.google.com/g/soc.genealogy.medieval/c/Jyb51qvAWnw/m/KGLKeG5-NioJ that "The
Chronicon Villarense calls her niece of Abenalfaje (which is a more
accurate rendition of the same name as Abenabeth, and refers to the
family of Al Mu'tamid)."

[taf]

On Friday, May 20, 2022 at 7:24:46 PM UTC-7, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:

> Thanks for the reply, Todd. You said in 2009 at https://groups.google.com/g/soc.genealogy.medieval/c/Jyb51qvAWnw/m/KGLKeG5-NioJ that "The
> Chronicon Villarense calls her niece of Abenalfaje (which is a more
> accurate rendition of the same name as Abenabeth, and refers to the
> family of Al Mu'tamid)."

I knew there was a third source, but couldn't remember off the top of my head what it said. The point remains - we have a confused record, with three different sources giving three different relationships, and from this arises an attempt to generate a reconstruction whereby all three sources that report these contradictory relationships are nonetheless all correct. Though possible, is to me to be avoiding the obvious alternative - that the Christian sources became aware that she was (vaguely) related to the Taifa ruler, and related this with incorrect precision.

It is not uncommon for relationships to become more precise with distance and time. Clearly this happened with some of the sources relating to Agatha (such as the one making her daughter of Solomon), and I think it is just as likely to have been the case here, rather than that the source saying she was daughter of Ibn Abbad, the source saying she was daughter-in-law of Ibn Abbad, and the source saying she was niece of Ibn Abbad were all reporting accurate relationships for the same woman.

taf

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]