Onneca Fortúnez

Marriage to Emir Abdullah

Onneca's father Fortún Garcés, the then heir to the throne of Pamplona, was captured in 860 in the town of Milagro during a punitive expedition led by Muhammad I, the Muslim emir of Córdoba, against the small Kingdom of Pamplona. The expedition resulted in the devastation of the Christian kingdom's territory and the seizure of three castles by the Muslim forces. Fortun Garcés, nicknamed al-Anqar (الأنقر) by the Muslims because he was one-eyed, was taken to Córdoba where he was detained for two decades in gilded captivity. Onneca accompanied or followed her father to Córdoba, where she was wedded to Muhammad I's son Abdullah around 862/863. It is not known when or how she came to Córdoba. She may have been captured with her father, or sent to join her father at the emir's court at a later date. Onneca was presumably still a teenager when she bore Abdullah a son named Muhammad in 864. As Abdullah's wife, Onneca became known as Durr. According to some sources, she converted to Islam.

In addition to Muhammad, Onneca bore Abdullah two daughters: al-Baha' and Fatima the Younger. Abdullah became emir in 888, and Onneca's son Muhammad was named heir to the throne. However, Muhammad was assassinated by his younger half-brother al-Mutarrif on 28 January 891. There is disagreement among historians as to whether al-Mutarrif acted on his own or at the instigation of his father Abdullah. Al-Mutarrif himself was beheaded in 895 under orders of his father. As a result, Muhammad's son Abd-ar-Rahman, who was born three weeks prior to his father's assassination, was the one who succeeded his grandfather Abdullah as emir of Córdoba. Known in the West as Abd-ar-Rahman III, he later elevated himself to the position of caliph.

Onneca was thus the paternal grandmother of Abd-ar-Rahman III, who inherited from her as well as from his mother Muzna hailing from the Pyrenees (probably a Basque) European facial features such as blue eyes and light reddish hair that he attempted to alter (notably through hair coloring) in order to look more typically Arab.

Marriage to Aznar Sánchez de Laron

In about 880, after two decades in Córdoba, Onneca abandoned her Muslim family, and returned with her father to Pamplona, to which he would shortly succeed. Shortly after her return, Onneca married her first cousin Aznar Sánchez de Laron. Together they had a son and two daughters, probably born between 880 and 890: Sancho, Toda and Sancha. Their son Sancho Aznar is only known from the Roda Codex genealogies and may have died young. Their daughters Toda and Sancha would both become queens consort of Pamplona by marrying into the Jiménez dynasty, which came to power in 905 after displacing Onneca's father Fortún Garcés from the throne. Toda married Sancho I Garcés, thus uniting the royal houses of Íñiguez and Jiménez. Toda's sister Sancha was wedded to Sancho I Garcés' brother and successor Jimeno Garcés, and was later killed in France by her son García Jiménez.

Alternative chronology

The Roda Codex, the sole source for Onneca's Christian marriage, places this union with her cousin Aznar Sánchez de Laron before her marriage, as a widow, to Abdullah of Córdoba. Based on this, French historian Évariste Lévi-Provençal developed a chronology for Onneca's life that placed her birth date around 835. Lévi-Provençal believed that Onneca did not accompany her father when he returned to Pamplona in 882, either because she had already died, or because she had converted to Islam and chose to remain in Abdullah's harem. However, such a chronology is problematic since it implies that Onneca's children by Aznar were born before or only shortly after her father's capture in 860, thus making Onneca's daughter Toda Aznárez a sexagenarian at the time of her son García Sánchez I's birth (which is known to have occurred in either 919 or 922), and nearly a centenarian at the time of her 958 visit to Cordoba. Therefore, most historians addressing the question have concluded that the Roda Codex was in error with regard to the order of Onneca's two marriages.

Legacy

Onneca's historical importance stems from the fact that she provided an important genealogical link between the Muslim caliphs of Córdoba and the Christian kings of Pamplona, as well as between the first two royal dynasties of Pamplona.

Family tree

The following family tree shows the relationship between Onneca and her immediate relatives. Solid lines indicate descent, while horizontal dashed lines indicate marriage. The names of the three dynasties to which Onneca was directly related are in big capital letters: the Íñiguez dynasty into which she was born and married, the Umayyad dynasty into which she married, and the Jiménez dynasty into which her two Christian daughters married.