The music is Morisco music, found on Iberian Garden, Vol. 1 by
Altramar. The piece is Muwashshah: Mā li-l-muwallah, 1113-1198.
This music takes place at the beautiful gardens along the Guadalquiver, near Cordoba.
This is during the "convivencia" under Alfonso X (El Sabio - The Wise), the time
before Granda fell: when Christians, Moslems and Jews lived at peace with each
other. Muwashshah are songs in poetic form, with instrumental interludes in the
form of Ibn Bājja (Avempace): 1470-1520. This is Morisco art.
"Zarçamodonia" was a mora warrior, a "manly woman", an
"Amazon". She fought against Spanish crown soldiers. Moriscas (and
Moriscos) were mostly unarmed, fighting Spanish mounted troops that
were well armed, seeking to kill Moricos, Moriscas, old people and
children. Not only was Zarçamodonia a warrior, she also
got disagreeing Muslim allied soldiers to work together, including
Moriscos, Ottomans, and North African Berbers. Zarçamodonia
used a captured sword to oppose her enemies. At the battle of Galera,
the Moriscos and Moriscas, as well as the children used sticks and
stones against "chivalrous" Spanish cavalry armed with canons,
arquebuses, swords, pikes, and crossbows. "Zarçamodonia"
captured a sword, and opposed the Spanish soldiers. Thus the famed
Spanish "chivalry" was really a sham, just a lot of propaganda,
believed in by the Spanish, as a means of building up a positive
narcissistic view of themselves).
"Zarçamodonia"
"attacked a soldier who climbed up the fortification very confident of
his own bravery, and with the sword she wounded him badly, and not
content with this she grappled with him so powerfully that she knocked
him off his feet and in one instant without anyone's being able to
defend him, she beheaded him and seized the armor and helmet that the
soldier was wearing, and the first wound that she gave him, as the
soldier came over the fortification, went to the point beneath the
armor for the groin, with such ferocity that the soldier could not
regain his feet." 1
Donning the slain soldier's armor and helmet, Zarçamodonia
continued to fight, killing "by her hand eighteen soldiers, and not the
worst of the field."
'Pérez de Hita praised "many other Moras [who] also fought
courageously and died fighting as men." He described one young woman
who died that day. This
"very beautiful maiden, who had lost her mother earlier, knew that her
father had died in the bombardment, and taking by her hand her two
little brothers she left her house and ... gathered the two children
with her left arm and brandishing a sword with the right hand, she
went out to the battle and fought bravely with the Christians until
they killed her and her two brothers together." 2
1
"Guerras civiles de Granada, 2:253",
by Pérez de Hita; See: "The Handless Maiden: Moriscos and
the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain", by Mary Perry,
pp. 100, 101
2
"Guerras civiles de Granada, 2:286",
by Pérez de Hita; See: "The Handless Maiden: Moriscos and
the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain", by Mary Perry,
pp. 101, 102