The first thing we need to know when reading a historical novel is the definition of what this literary segment is.

It is common for people to associate historical novels with simply past narratives, usually half a century or more, when in fact this is the definition of epoch romance.

A historical novel must have among its characters people referenced by historiography who relate or not to the fictional characters who move the plot. More importantly, it should not change the course of history. The non-historical or fictional characters orbit around the so-called historical characters and with them, the script unfolds.

Many do not agree with this and so, there happen the adaptations for the cinema and television whose writers change the history at their pleasure in the name of sacred poetic freedom and mutilate the History misinforming people.

So, does this mean that the author of the historical novel is completely tied up in relation to the historical characters?

Not exactly. There is flexibility related to the uncertainties of the historiography known about the character.

In this Afterword, we will see the choices that were used in "At South of Guadarrama" that by having its ambiance more than a thousand years in the past offers the author several paths according to the dubious or not clarified points in the characters'.

The first choice that I would like to explain is the title of the work: To the South of Guadarrama. By the end of the eighth century, when the Moorish boundaries in practical terms took their final form, until the period of Christian advance in the eleventh century, the division between the Christians of the North and the Muslims to the south could be represented in a manner acceptable by the so-called mountains of Sierra de Guadarrama. These mountains run in the northeast direction of Coimbra in Portugal, until Zaragoza, when then the river Ebro assumes the role of this limit line.

Other important aspects refer to Subh. We know that it was native to northern Spain, the region of Galicia and so is often referenced in reports in Spanish as Basque. None of the chroniclers claims that Subh was a Christian, but neither affirms that he was not. Why not then assume that it was? That is why I chose to consider it, before the capture, a Christian. We do not know, however, exactly how it came to court. There are reports that she has been imprisoned. Others, mounted on legends after her life, report that she was gathered together with her brothers as children while playing in an isolated region near their villages and were found by a troop of Muslims or merchants of slaves.

Due to these uncertainties, I opted her arrival in Cordoba as a prisoner, after wrenched from her mother's arms, a custom used against the defeated in battles. The accounts of the Arab chroniclers portray that the girl became a woman of extreme beauty and, according to another legend, seduced Hakam II wearing men's clothes and shortening the hair as if she was a boy. This account is consistent with some insinuations that Hakam had attractions for young boys and had not yet married, even being already in middle age. As for his sexual preferences, we do not know for sure, since at that time both Christianity and Judaism and Islam condemned homosexuality as a sin (a modern term that did not exist at that time), a taboo, however, there were people who practiced it, usually secretly.

Al-Andalus's Arab chroniclers mention stories of gay and lesbian homosexual adventures. However, as far as Hakam is concerned, we know only that he was truly delighted with Subh and presented her with his attention and dedication as a good husband, although the books and the death of his firstborn may, in the end, have made him more inmate than his beautiful wife desired, thus giving the motives to those who define her as an adulteress.

The passionate feeling of Al-Hakam was the cause, say the texts, of Subh mastering his will and his heart, so that he did not oppose any of his desires and loved the children he had with her more than anyone else.

Another aspect of Subh's life is very controversial is whether she had a loving relationship with Almanzor. Had she committed adultery, a serious crime in those days?

The chroniclers diverge with some affirming that yes and that even she would be responsible, along with Almanzor, for the seizure induced in Hisham, her son.

I preferred to create a nobler character and I find the accusation that she would be an accomplice with Almanzor in Hisham's seclusion even incoherent. You must remember that I referred to the fact that Almanzor was ruthless with those who invented stories between him and Subh. This corroborates the idea that they were not lovers. Another negative aspect running against this hypothesis is the harsh penalty prescribed in the Quran for infidelity in marriage, especially in the case of the mother of a Caliph.

Was it the motherhood of the Caliph, despite being a Caliph that could not be named with a capital "C", a license for crimes of this kind?

On the other hand, those who consider her to have been an adulteress justify her position by thinking that when Almanzor used her feminine vulnerability, typical in Islamic society, to rise to the post in the administration after abandoning her, her attitude was exactly that of a disgruntled lover, who even lamented that she had sacrificed his son's interests to those of his lover.

In fact, this seclusion of the caliph and the form and boundaries of it is hazy, for Hisham was revered to the end as Caliph and had control over some important things, such as the keys of the kingdom's vault.

The question you can ask is:

Why did Almanzor only withdraw this power from him when he felt threatened by an internal revolt? Why did he not take on this important role of directly controlling resources?

The answer must be because Hisham was actually the Caliph recognized by the population. He was just someone who, anomalously, was not interested in government. He had a weak nature, was not determined, and found it convenient to delegate his duties to someone who had a wide hold over his will.

Subh had access to his son and used it to get the money he needed to fund the revolt against Almanzor. The chroniclers claim that he had the help of one of his brothers in court. I did prefer not to put this supposed brother in the plot since he had already created another non-existent brother for Almanzor.

After their defeat, the events occurred exactly as I reported in my story; Subh, in Dozy's words, was humiliated, submissive and disjointed, and appeared in public only on two more occasions. One of them when she was forced to parade in the procession that Almanzor promoted with the Caliph and the nobles, in which she presented herself in a decorative and submissive position.

As I put it in the Epilogue Almanzor was one of the great princes in history despite his methods and would certainly be much studied and revered if he were not a Muslim. Some exaggerations of some Arab historians even compare him to Alexander the Great, which would be an extravagant measure, but he was certainly less remembered than other Christian leaders of similar virtues and vices.

I chose to let Almanzor follow in my history the destiny that is known. Another novel I referred to in the Preface did not do this and although a person familiar with historiography wrote it, she invented a murder perpetrated by the mother of his wife Asma. As you can see, not everyone thinks the same way about the fate of historical characters.

The fact is that I have read worse historical heresies. In a novel about Alexander the Great, a very good novel, an author "unveiled" one of the greatest mysteries in history, that is, he created a solution to the murder of Philip II, his father. A crime whose authorship has been under discussion for centuries, there is plenty of evidence about several potential constituents, but no historian has dared to affirm a categorical solution to this mystery.

One important thing is the role of women in this plot, given what we know today about the role of women in the Islamic world. Arab chroniclers, for example, portray Subh as a cultured, intelligent and active woman who knew how to organize a support network designed to protect her son's succession. She dominated the administrative apparatus and placed in key places her protégées. A woman who made decisions for herself and ended up being a major element of political power for over twenty years overtaking the invisible border that divides the world into men and women and penetrating the core of power. Sayyida Subh had control of the kingdom because of her son's minority, and the viziers and Minister did not decide anything without consulting her or doing anything she did not order until the break with Almanzor.

The general studies being published more recently on Andalusia, unlike those made in the 19th century, are not giving much prominence to the figure of Subh, merely mentioning she as Hisham's mother. However, it must be said that it was the portraits of her in the 19th Century, like that of the Dutchman Dozy, who defined almost everything that was written about Subh. It was he who first called her as Sultana, giving it a title that does not appear in any Andalusian source, but which corresponded to the exotic exoticism then in vogue.

Several times, I have used this nomenclature initiated by Reinhart Dozy.

Placing beside her a fictional character, Jalila, I chose to give her the same kind of characteristics as her mentor; Determined, independent, decided. A woman who knows what she wants and takes on the plot a leading position. At times, I had difficulty defining Jalila's social and sexual behavior. For a woman of the people, the liberal behavior with which I portrayed her might not have been possible. However, Jalila was a woman of the court, resembling the women of the Harem, and so I chose to give her a different behavior.

One aspect still to be commented on sexuality refers to eroticism. Muslim women did not need to hide their beauty, but there were postures of how to behave in public, where they could not make sensual looks and gestures with their mouths, dress in necklines, show their legs and even their ankles, in addition to the fact that women were not alone in the streets, usually accompanied by relatives or slaves.

In this specific issue, I remember the scene in which Jalila goes alone to the Monastery of Tabanas, which may have been surprising for many. I did not put this discussion in the narrative, but the option to go it alone was, in my conception of an author, necessary at that moment of the plot and created a climate of suspense.

Now let's talk a bit about the Manuscript discovered by Amal.

The manuscript exists, but I have shifted its discovery over time. It is the Manuscript of Sana, discovered in the attic of the mosque of Sana in Yemen in 1972, therefore, recent. A manuscript like that, if found at that time, could create problems for Islam, but of course, these rewritten scrolls only happened centuries later. Amal was right in trying to use the manuscript in favor of Christianity. In a way, I forced myself a bit by abusing the fact that it was a fiction, for it would be very difficult to identify the lower layer without the modern techniques of today. Therefore, in the narrative, I made it a point to emphasize that there were few layers that could be understood as a rewrite.

An important quality that the historical novel must have is the absence of anachronisms. The author always needs to be policed not to include in the history uses customs and objects of his century. A simple sanitary private or the use of paper for writing needs to have its use verified at the time of the narrative.

It is interesting to note that recent archaeological excavations in the sites of ancient Cordoba, carried out by the University of Cordoba, showed a very similar pattern of houses where houses almost always had a vestibule or lobby at the main entrance, which limited access for the other rooms, maintaining a privacy that is valued by Islam. The houses also had an inner courtyard uncovered. Only the family members could access the interior of the house. This hall was where visitors were received. The interesting thing is that these houses were equipped with effective sanitary facilities, with privates connected to skeptical cesspits or in some cases the drainage network. This involved the existence of professionals to clean these cesspits and nets. There were also water distribution systems and rainwater harvesting. A clear evolution from what we know of medieval Christian Europe.

The house we described in the ensemble of Al-Zahara, in which the double murder of Bahadur and Stephen, by Ghufran in Chapter 16, occurred, was a house of these characteristics.

The Monastery of Tabanos mentioned in the book and led by the fictional character Abbot Juan Herrera, really existed, but its destruction occurred earlier than the time of the end of our plot. The construction was devastated around 854. In this Monastery, indeed, some of the monks, including Eulogius, lived, who gave grounds for Christian martyrdom in Cordoba from 850 to 859.

As explained in the Preface, the historical period of Cordoba from 982 to 998 was quite condensed in our plot.

In the murder episode of Bahija my first and natural option was the use of a syringe, an instrument that we are both used to. However, it turns out that the syringe, although existing from antiquity, was not yet used for injections. Only with Pascal's hydraulic studies in the 17th century did it begin to be used in medicine to inject substances into the bloodstream. I had to find a way to inoculate poison that was compatible with the technology or customs of that time, although there are reports that Abu'l-Qasim Khalaf ibn 'Abbas al-Zaharawi, in Latin written as Abulcasis (or Albucasis), (Medina Al-Azhara, 936-1013), a medical surgeon of al-Andalus, used it for enemas. Initially, they were made of bamboo after metal, silver or copper.

Finally, we will talk a little about the famous library, the scenario of much of the plot.

The Library was indeed a grandiose undertaking compatible with the numbers that were presented in Chapter 3, despite some exaggeration of the Arab chroniclers. But it was important while Al-Hakam II lived. With his death, shortly afterward Almanzor sponsored the burning of profane books to sweeten the criticism of the clerics who accused him of not being a complete Muslim. The narratives tell that the shelves were constructed of scented and polished wood and many rooms in the palace were used for the services of copy, lighting, book-making and bookbinding, work that was done by specialists of both sexes. Another narrative informs that on one occasion the change from just the collection of poetry, from one room to another, took five days to complete.

In our history, the Library is located in Al-Zahara, but it must have been started in the ancient Alcazar of Hakam II. It should be remembered that the Arabs knew the role long before the other peoples and none of the Islamic writings are on scrolls or scrolls, but in bound books.

At the time of our character Amal, the Library knew the beginning of its decline and came to be completely destroyed with the Berber invasions and few manuscripts survived until our time.

In short, the observations we seek to explain help clarify the peculiarities inherent in a society established a thousand years in the past and the reader must keep in mind when reading a historical novel, however true to history it may be, and AtSouth of Guadarrama intended to have this fidelity, is not the same as studying history. He can, and that is his big role, to be a motto to influence people to research History.