Jalila remained alone standing and heard the singing of the evening prayers with shuddering chills, and leaning on the chin, peered through the windowsill that separated her from those who walked in the courtyard below. Her thoughts and imaginings were heavy with sadness, anger, and nagging doubts and she remembered the key events on which her family had spent about 125 years ago, which had been repeatedly taught and that ultimately led her to the palace, for revenge.

Had completed up nearly eleven years since she had been chosen to join the retinue of Sultana Subh and already as planned Jalila was considered as the main companion of the queen. Living in the palace, where she had come, chosen by Subh, then still the wife of the Caliph, and in its origin, a princess of the same north Visigoth kingdom soon grew between them intimacy with complicity much helped by the palace's environment. This was a feeling that soon was transformed into sincere friendship, a short step for the brotherly love that would flow between the two women.

Her thoughts always returned in time when their Christian family had been shattered by the events led by Eulogio priest who her ancestor was a follower and martyr. On these occasions, flowed along with the reflections on that episode which was never completely assimilated in its essence, a sense of guilt, for being there enjoying favors, without having yet begun any action that could lead to what her family expected.

Two years after Jalila join the entourage of the Caliph, his cousin Amal also managed to unite to the palatial body occupying the desired place in the library of the Caliph Al Hakam II, who reportedly was one of the wonders of Córdoba, with thousands of volumes, which the Caliph ordered to seek by paying its weight in gold in Cairo, Damascus or Baghdad. Such a sized library requires the work of many professionals in various specialties. Al-Hakam was known as a man with an aversion to the state affairs and more concerned with his rare books, which according to everyone's knowledge, he not only read them all, as he used to make notes in the margins of each of them. It was then created the opportunity; two family members, at the same time in the Al-Zahara palace; It was lacking only a plan.

Al-Zahara, where part of our history will be developed, was a veritable city within a city, the village of Zahara, created by the Caliph al-Rahman, the father of Al-Hakam on the outskirts of Cordoba, in honor to one of his wives.

Muslim records indicate that the palace housed among nobles, eunuchs, women in various classes and servers, the incredible number of 13,750 people, to whom a daily supply of fresh meat, excluding poultry and fish reaches 6,250 kilograms. The Harim is said to have amounted to 6,314 women, and professionals, servants, helpers, pages, eunuchs and Slav guard, were 3,350 people.

The Cordoba of the 10th century allowed the dwelling together reasonably harmonious among the three monotheistic religions, but some care was needed to be taken. First, recognize the authority of the Muslims and pay the Jizya, a fee for those who did not profess the Islamic religion, classified as dhimmis. Dhimmis was a term applied to both Christians and Jews and later to several other services, which were forbidden to build new churches and perform rituals gathering many people, for example, processions and public funerals. In addition, the tolling of the bells was forbidden. So, some Christian families used this dangerous subterfuge of falsely converting to Islam, adopting Arab names while at home, secretly they continued Christian practices.

Cordoba was a fortified city, surrounded by a high and massive stone wall, its streets were very narrow, and its inhabitants were famous for their courtesy and polished manners, superior intelligence, determined tastes, superb cuisine and gallant in their clothing and mounts. The Guadalquivir margins were bright with marble houses and gardens with rare flowers and trees from other parts of the world, carefully cultivated by Arabs and their irrigation systems. The water with which these numerous gardens were irrigated, brought from the mountains, where traces of hydraulic works may still be seen, by means of lead pipes, which led to numerous basins, some of gold or silver, other bronze and lakes and reservoirs, tanks and marble fountains in a Greek-style.

In the period of our narrative, the city was home to half a million people, it had over a thousand mosques, splendid palaces, full of noble buildings among which counted more than 50,000 homes of the aristocracy, about 200,000 popular households, more than 80,000 stores, nine hundred public baths and twenty-eight suburbs, second in size and splendor bellow of Baghdad, although its inhabitants worshiped compare it with this important center of the Muslim world.

At the cultural issue, the city shines with their doctors distributed among all branches of knowledge. They have grouped in Cordoba all types of students, eager to learn poetry, studying the sciences or enhance the study of divine laws, that the city became the meeting point of various levels of scholars. Among the great architectural beauties of Cordoba, the main mosque took the prominent place and still takes the first place, modified to serve as a Christian cathedral. "Cordoba was to Andalusia what the head is to the body, or what the breast is to the lion."

A moment of agitation affected the inhabitants of the town when the Caliph Hakam II breathed his last and his son, Hisham II, was only a boy of eleven years. It meant that Andalusia would be under a regency, a system of government considered extremely disgusting by the Arabs. However, this was the desire of Al-Hakam, expressed to the court a few months before he died when he felt his forces falling away. To ratify and formalize his desire he promoted a collective oath of allegiance to the heir, carried out by all nobles of the capital, in the hall of the throne, this oath was transferred on the same day to the people. This oath was then repeated in all provinces. A regency which became final after a palatial dispute and resulted in permanent segregation or practical terms into a domiciliary prison of the Caliph boy, under the tutelage of Abu Amir Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Abi Amir.

Ibn Abi Amir or Almanzor, as the usurper would come later-call himself meaning "Victorious by the grace of God", was of a noble family, belonging to a Yemeni tribe, but not illustrious and who had risen to meteoric way to higher positions of caliphate during the administration of Al Hakam, very influenced by the Sultana Subh. Upon the death of the Caliph, he held the position of Commander of the Guard, whose function was to act as police in the capital. For a better understanding of our plot will, in due course, we will share some details of his life and the character of this personage, as important as feared, in the history of the Caliphate of Córdoba.

It was in this cultural splendor cauldron and political turmoil, which inside the innermost of those descendants of the Christian martyrs, housed in Al-Zahara, began to awaken the conviction that the opportunity that their families were waiting for so many years, seemed to have arrived and was sure the long-awaited opportunity unplanned, which was fueled by faith for more than a century. However, the years had been accumulated and no possible articulation was put into action. Their families, hopeless, felt betrayed and frustrated almost freeing them as executors of the centennial plan to avenge the ancestors. In fact, deep down, gradually, the alleged executioners were realizing that they did not care so much anymore with the plan.

In the minds of both, with time, these plans for revenge had started to become distant, since each of them, for different reasons, had received caresses, affection, and attention that they did not expect to receive, making the preparation of action for revenge against their benefactors, quite uncomfortable.

Jalila, as already reported, had become a friend and confidant of Subh and as per consequence of the Caliph and crowned princes and a tender friendship was born between the two women. Why destroy all this happiness and comfort for something located more than one hundred years in the past and not entirely understood by her. His life was good, better than most of the inhabitants of Córdoba. It was not fair. Finally, isn't it true that those crazy relatives had searched for their own luck? Is not for that, why they were called of mad monks?

Amal was already subject to a situation where the interest and dedication of the Caliph practically changed his quality of life by removing him from the path of a daredevil destination in relation to his own health. Perhaps because of the pressure and anxiety caused by the family project of revenge, Amal had developed obesity, approaching a condition that, modernly, call morbid. The doctor of the caliphate in Cordoba was a disciple of one of the most renowned practitioners of old, the famous Jewish doctor Hasdai, who served in the caliphate of Al-Rahman and had healed the obesity of Sancho I of León, a ruse used by the Caliph on that occasion to get the support of the Christian king against other rival Christian kingdoms.

This doctor also Jewish, named Benzecry, showed great satisfaction on applying his inherited knowledge of the great Hasdai, so he was called by the Caliph to meet Amal, who had difficulty in the simple act of walking. The treatment performed based on native plants or imported from other regions had an effective result and, in a few months, Amal would get rid of the huge excess weight that burdened his heart and his joints. His gratitude to the Caliph had an immediate impact on his plans for revenge. In addition, Amal had a great enthusiasm for his own work at the library and not only loved what he was doing as he admired the work of Hakam.

Jalila and Amal, since the beginning of their stays, while still, they thought about the revenge project, agreed to avoid identification of themselves as relatives while inside the palace, though secrets could be dangerous vulnerabilities in the environment in which they lived. They kept a sort of reserve and caution in their approaches, only allowing any meetings between themselves to take place only the courtyard and occasionally when she needed to go to the library at Subh's request. Outside the palace, they avoided any meeting, because the times were dangerous and were not a good idea to direct the attention to themselves. They did not yet have an effective plan or scheme, a fault that was motivations for complaints by both family branches during the opportunities in which they met with their relatives. These occasions are becoming increasingly rare as both had lodgings within the Al-Zahara and they considered better not to risk their families. Over time, this care with the meetings at the palace began to be pushed aside, although they could not, from one hour to another, make public the relationship for so long hidden from everyone.

It was then that Jalila identified Subh's fears as being of the same material that already fed the revenge plan of her family. Interestingly, the two relatives did not realize is that the difficult undertaking, forcibly abandoned, would be rescued and enhanced with the competition of new actors, united by the circumstances into the same goal, though for different reasons. New feelings generated by the fear of probable actual losses, would replace the old and unassimilated desire of family revenge for something new, strong and committed.

While these events were unfolding, Subh was worried about the future and in her memory came the scenes when she was a powerful woman of the Caliph. The situation was heading towards a dangerous direction and she imagined an uncertain fate for herself. Despite all be only memories, it was still admired by his subjects, which worried about her and complained, albeit timidly, the seclusion condition of the Caliph.

She was still beautiful with her white complexions like ivory, bright green eyes, her long golden hair in a reddish tone, graceful shapes with measures proportionally distributed between her lines and curves. When flooded by memories liked to identify himself by her Christian baptismal name, Aurora. In a certain way, the Subh name under which she was renamed never pleased her because it recalls her slave condition and chosen woman. She still remembered the scene when was torn from the arms of his Basque mother and transported to Cordoba. Her beauty and intelligence made her be chosen for the palace, where she grew up, was educated and later came to arouse the attention of Al Hakam, a middle-aged man, shy with women, but which admired the beauty. Since then, Subh joined the harem, finally being chosen as a favorite.

The first years were a sea of tranquility, Subh beside the Caliph was the ideal queen and accompanied him in his tireless concern about the books, opening libraries in Cordoba and promoting culture in addition to performing the role of mother of two crown-princes. However, slowly, things have changed, and the premature death of the firstborn put Hakam away from her driving him to delve into his literary tasks, leaving the cultural charges for the exclusive responsibility of Subh. In these tasks, she began to have the company and help of no less than Ibn Abi Amir, the ambitious palatial bureaucrat, which has coped with enormous political skill until be appointed by the Caliph, to manage the real estates and Subh's funds and of his heirs.

At the beginning, Subh approved the appointment and enjoyed Ibn Abi Amir, because, besides the management of funds, he shared with her the burden of cultural activities in Cordoba, but in the time in which lies this narrative she was driving him scathing hate blaming him, as a potential destroyer of Cordoba and was devoting towards him a huge contempt for groundless slanders that were heard in the population and that exposed her as devil's former lover.

Since her husband's death, Subh was being bothered by the fact that her son and heir Hisham II was being kept prisoner and convinced by the ambition of Ibn Abi Amir to get away from government issues. At first, she understood and accepted the situation because her son was only eleven, but Hisham approached adulthood and continued in practice kidnapped when logic indicated that he should already be starting to become aware of state matters. But no, Ibn Abi Amir said that the Caliph only cared about good works, read the Koran, praying, fasting and did not express any interest in governing, preferring to be the spiritual leader of Andalusia. Subh had the belief that this version was a fallacy, which found support only in Ibn Abi Amir's ambition to become the Caliph in fact, for whose achievement would do everything under his power to deceive the people with this idea.

Aware of the respect and admiration of all in Cordoba had by the heir, she also knew he would not dare anything more drastic and so, at least Hisham's integrity was safe. This gave her the confidence to try some action that maternal love encouraged her to undertake. Timidly began conspiring with some other nobles in the palace, which were loyal to her since Al-Hakam's times. With wittiness, she realized those who shared the same anxiety against the seclusion of the Caliph, while also doubted the regent's intentions and were willing to risk their lives and fight for the throne's rescue in favor of her son Hisham.

Jalila who had just come out of his own reflective moment approached of Subh interrupting the moment of Sultana and gently asked:

- Thoughtfully, does your heart sees already a newly elected?

- It would be a salve for these days, however, there is no one in my life whom I might consider being in this condition, my dear, but you know, I even need a little love, she said outlining a nice smile.

- So, are those fears, and concerns related to the Caliph situation? Jalila said, almost whispering.

The intimacy and confidence that they kept together turned Jalila into a kind of messenger, a task that she soon had accepted by loyalty realizing what was at stake. This was completely different from the idea of the family plan for vengeance, buried in the recesses of her memory. When elapsed five years of her stay at the Palace with Subh she decided to reveal her initial intentions, although omitting many details as the participation of his cousin and making clear that it was all a simple nonsense family desire, which she had never shared. She felt that friendship was strong enough to allow this revelation and thus remain no secrets between her and her mistress, in fact, as a matter of fact, a half secret. As for the present situation, her practical personality had perceived a goal, because everything for which she had fought was at risk. She still doubted that the Sultana's movements could go beyond hidden conversations. Jalila, with her sympathy and free transit by all sectors of the palace and while shopping under Subh's request at Cordoba's trade was responsible for initiating the first contacts, carrying camouflaged messages from the Sultana addressed to any allies who shared his anxiety with the situation of the caliphate's heir.

- A little, but we must not be afraid, we are on the right side and in what refers to you, glad we finally also will eventually fulfill the plans that your family entrusted him. It will be a long way, do not think that we will face an easy path, but we will be ready and, I cannot imagine that God, whoever he is, Allah or Christ, is not on our side.

Saying that Subh embraced Jalila long and affectionately and then turning to his quarters.

Jalila remained standing still for a few moments reflecting on the words of Subh that showed an unexpected determination and then she walked toward her own room, not too far away, but also feeling a dose of concern.