Interracial relations are nothing new; the practice is fairly endemic throughout human history. As for Medieval Iberia, interracial relations occasionally traversed religious lines. Since the Quran permits Muslim men to marry Christian and Jewish women, numerous Muslim rulers took Christian wives and concubines, to meet their own political ends. However, the inverse is less common: comparatively rarely did A Christian male engage in relations with Muslim women, particularly during the height of Umayyad supremacy in the Peninsula.
This is precisely the period I am working within, when the military strongman al-Mansur dominated the Peninsula in the late tenth century. Interestingly, folio 87r of Escorial II points us to the fraternisation between the Castilian count don Gonçalo Gustioz and a Moorish female. Whilst Gonçalo is held prisoner in Cordova, al-Mansur entrusts the count’s keeping to an unnamed woman, identified only as a mora (Moorish woman). The count and his keeper really hit it off… so much so that they have a child together. This is an interesting instance of interracial relations, especially if in this section of the Estoria the term mora is taken to indicate a Muslim female. As for the outcome of Gonçalo’s escapades, the plot thickens, and I have yet to find out what becomes of this tale…