Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg: Zarcamodonia

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

Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg Zarçamodonia

Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Zarçamodonia