Emma Lira wins the Edhasa prize for historic novel with a recreation of the splendor of Medina Azahara and the rise of Almanzor | Culture | EUROtoday

A novel that recreates the splendor of the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba and the rise of the chief Almanzor, The mild of Medinaby the author Emma Lira (Madrid, 55 years previous), has at present been proclaimed winner of the Edhasa Prize for historic narrative in its ninth version. The jury, which incorporates Mari Pau Domínguez, Carlos García Gual, María José Solano and Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, has valued “the extraordinary sensitivity” with which the novel describes “with rich details and a veiled exoticism, the Arab-Muslim Hispania of the caliphate, at the summit of Medina Azahara, as well as the history of Almanzor before it became a legend.”

The mild of medina It focuses particularly, along with the warrior chief, on the historic determine of Lubna of Córdoba, a slave who grew to become secretary of the chancellery of al-Hakam II and had a decisive function in organizing the caliph’s nice library that he needed to be the biggest on this planet and emulate the misplaced considered one of Alexandria.

This version, 284 novels competed for the prize organized by the Edhasa publishing home and awarded 10,000 euros. Lira, creator of eight earlier novels, together with The moon over Rome (2024) about Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, and The captive (2025), the novelization of the movie by Alejandro Amenábar, she is a collaborator in varied historical past and cultural information publications (one of many specialists at EL PAÍS Viajes), particularly in Muslim international locations similar to Morocco, Algeria (from which she has simply returned), Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Passionate about historical past and archeology and properly versed within the Arab world and Islam, she needed to assert in The mild of Medina the importance of the Caliphate of Córdoba within the face of a Spanish reminiscence fairly reluctant to offer it, he affirms, the significance it deserves.

The editor of Edhasa, Daniel Fernández, highlighted on the award ceremony in Barcelona the relevance with which Lira writes concerning the time and the best way through which she brings to life very highly effective Muslim figures and vindicates the function of girls in these occasions. Fernández has identified the added curiosity of displaying the splendor of the Caliphate of Córdoba at a time like the present one when there may be a lot debate over the huge regularization of emigrants, a lot of them from Islamic international locations. The editor has taken the chance to ironize that Abascal “looks like a great Christian knight but has the face of a caliph”, including that he even remembers the perverse vizier Iznogud from the comics created by Gosciny.

Lira has identified that in contrast to the Roman previous, which is unanimously accepted and valued, the Muslim previous “seems to be more lazy, and if the Romans are seen as civilizers, the Muslims are considered conquerors and are generally regarded as something foreign when they are an integral part of our history and our culture.” In this regard, he recalled that “al-Andalus was much more than Andalusia and reached the Cantabrian coast.”

He has identified how the Caliphate of Córdoba was like a papacy – “there could only be one caliph” – however on the time, the tenth century, three coincided: the Abbasid in Baghdad, that of the Fatimids, in North Africa and a part of the Middle East, with its capital in Cairo, and in Córdoba that of the Emir Abd al-Rahman III. Lira has highlighted the splendor of that Córdoba and its capital of Medina Azahara, a civilization that celebrated life and poetry, through which courtly love was sung, together with homoerotic love, and there was no scarcity, though it might shock, of wine. “That refined world allows you to use flowery prose like that of the time,” he mentioned.

The award-winning creator has highlighted the character of Lubna because the creator of the well-known library of 400,000 titles of the son of Abd al-Rahman III, al-Hakam II, a library of which she speculates that a part of its assortment might have handed to the well-known Toledo School of Translators of Alfonso X the Wise.

Lira has valued the usefulness of the historic novel to get better and delve into little-known and documented characters such because the scholar from Córdoba, who managed 200 feminine scribes who copied books for the library, or painting one other like Almanzor, who’s acquainted to all of us (the one with the drum, exactly) however who few know in depth “despite having been born in Algeciras, lived in Córdoba and died in Medinaceli.” In that sense, he has mirrored that Almanzor is “like the Hannibal of the Christians”, that feared warrior chief whose true character has been hidden in a form of damnation of reminiscence.

The mild of Medina However, regardless of the prominence of Almanzor, the Victorious, it isn’t a e book of battles, however slightly a slightly intimate portrait of the time. “I like to tell what is not seen, and in battles you usually see everything, I am interested in why human beings cry or sigh, the behind-the-door life of Mediana Azhara.”

On the quilt of the e book, Almanzor has a retreat to Ridley Scott’s Saladin in The gates of heaven. Emma Lira laughs: “It seems similar, true; Saladino was also a great strategist like Almanzor and if someone like Ridley Scott has to take it to the cinema, I couldn’t agree more.” The creator has ended by making certain that she trusts that The mild of Medina will show that “the editors who believe that al-Andalus does not sell” are unsuitable. While Fernández has promised to take everybody current on the award ceremony (together with the jury) to Cairo if the novel sells greater than 50,000 copies.