From The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the
Making of a Castilian Culture, © 2008 by Jerrilynn D. Dodds,
María Rosa Menocal, and Abigail Krasner Balbale. Few stories
better illustrate the intricate relations between the barely
choate Christian monarchies of the tenth century and the
Umayyads than the legendary Cordoban sojourn of the unfortunate
king remembered by the Cervantine name of Sancho the Fat. The
obese Sancho I inherited the throne of León in 956, and then
spent his entire lifetime defending it, involved in little else
besides the murderous politics of succession and power that
often led Christian princes and kings to seek protections and
strategic alliances with the Umayyads. Sancho’s journey to the
great metropolis of Cordoba took place in 958—during the reign
of Abd al-Rahman III—and was engineered by one of Pamplona’s
most formidable figures: his grandmother, Toda, queen mother of
the royal Navarrese house. Toda had both personal and political
interest in finding a cure for h