“It is little known by the British people that the blood of Mohammed flows in the veins of the queen. However, all Moslem religious leaders are proud of this fact,” wrote Burke’s publishing director, in a letter to the-then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1986.
“The royal family’s direct descent from the prophet Mohammed cannot be relied upon to protect the royal family forever from Moslem terrorists,” he added.
The study by Burke’s Peerage suggested that the Queen descended from a Muslim princess called Zaida, who fled her home town of Seville in the 11th century before converting to Christianity.
Zaida was the fourth wife of King Al-Mu’tamid ibn Abbad of Seville. She bore him a son Sancho, whose descendant later married the Earl of Cambridge in the 11th century.
However, historians contest over Zaida’s origins, some claiming she was the daughter of a wine-drinking caliph descended from the Prophet, while others say she married into his family.
