, Onneca Fortúnez

Onneca Fortúnez or Iñiga Fortúnez[1][2] (c. 848 – after 890)[3] was aBasque[4] princess from the Kingdom of Pamplona, later known as theKingdom of Navarre. She was the daughter of Fortún Garcés of Pamplona andhis wife Oria. At the time of Onneca''s birth, which occurred between 848and 850, the Iberian Peninsula was largely under the domination of theMuslim Umayyad dynasty. Only the northern kingdoms of Asturias andPamplona remained under Christian rule, perpetuating the Hispano-RomanVisigothic traditions. Onneca was a member of the Íñiguez dynasty, namedafter her great-grandfather Íñigo Arista, who founded the Kingdom ofPamplona.[5]
Information about Onneca''s life is sketchy. Biographical details abouther come from two main sources: the Roda Codex and the accounts of MuslimAndalusian historians, who refer to Onneca by the Arabic name Durr (??),meaning "pearl". Onneca is primarily known for marrying into the Umayyaddynasty. Although matrimonial unions between Christian slave-concubinesand Muslim rulers were common, Onneca''s case is one of the few examplesof a Christian princess marrying into Muslim royalty.[1] Her marriagecreated family ties between the Christian and Muslim ruling families ofthe Iberian peninsula, initially leading to close collaboration betweenthe Christian House of Íñiguez and the Muslim Umayyads.[6] The politicaleffects resulting from Onneca''s marriages continued to be felt long afterher death, which occurred at an unknown date.

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 expeditionled by Muhammad I, the Muslim emir of Córdoba, against the small Kingdomof Pamplona. The expedition resulted in the devastation of the Christiankingdom''s territory and the seizure of three castles by the Muslimforces. Fortun Garcés, nicknamed al-Anqar (??????) by the Muslims becausehe was one-eyed, was taken to Córdoba where he was detained for twodecades in gilded captivity.[7] Onneca accompanied or followed her fatherto Córdoba, where she was wedded to Muhammad I''s son Abdullah around862/863. It is not known when or how she came to Córdoba. She may havebeen captured with her father, or sent to join her father at the emir''scourt at a later date. Onneca was presumably still a teenager when shebore Abdullah a son named Muhammad in 864.[3] As Abdullah''s wife, Onnecabecame known as Durr.[8] According to some sources, she converted toIslam.[9][10]
In addition to Muhammad, Onneca bore Abdullah two daughters: al-Baha'' andFatima the Younger.[11] Abdullah became emir in 888, and Onneca''s sonMuhammad was named heir to the throne. However, Muhammad was assassinatedby his younger half-brother al-Mutarrif on 28 January 891. There isdisagreement among historians as to whether al-Mutarrif acted on his ownor at the instigation of his father Abdullah. Al-Mutarrif himself wasbeheaded in 895 under orders of his father. As a result, Muhammad''s sonAbd-ar-Rahman, who was born three weeks prior to his father''sassassination, was the one who succeeded his grandfather Abdullah as emirof Córdoba. Known in the West as Abd-ar-Rahman III, he later elevatedhimself to the position of caliph.[12]
Onneca was thus the paternal grandmother of Abd-ar-Rahman III, whoinherited from her as well as from his mother Muzna hailing from thePyrenees (probably a Basque) European facial features such as blue eyesand light reddish hair that he attempted to alter (notably through haircoloring) in order to look more typically Arab.[2][4]

In about 880, after two decades in Córdoba, Onneca abandoned her Muslimfamily,[13] and returned with her father to Pamplona, to which he wouldshortly succeed. Shortly after her return, Onneca married her firstcousin Aznar Sánchez de Laron. Together they had a son and two daughters,probably born between 880 and 890: Sancho, Toda and Sancha. Their sonSancho Aznar is only known from the Roda Codex genealogies and may havedied young.[3] Their daughters Toda and Sancha would both become queensconsort of Pamplona by marrying into the Jiménez dynasty, which came topower in 905 after displacing Onneca''s father Fortún Garcés from thethrone. Toda married Sancho I Garcés, thus uniting the royal houses ofÍñiguez and Jiménez.[14] Toda''s sister Sancha was wedded to Sancho IGarcés'' brother and successor Jimeno Garcés, and was later killed inFrance by her son García Jiménez.[15]

The Roda Codex, the sole source for Onneca''s Christian marriage, placesthis union with her cousin Aznar Sánchez de Laron before her marriage, asa widow, to Abdullah of Córdoba. Based on this, French historian ÉvaristeLévi-Provençal developed a chronology for Onneca''s life that placed herbirth date around 835. Lévi-Provençal believed that Onneca did notaccompany her father when he returned to Pamplona in 882, either becauseshe had already died, or because she had converted to Islam and chose toremain in Abdullah''s harem.[10] However, such a chronology is problematicsince it implies that Onneca''s children by Aznar were born before or onlyshortly after her father''s capture in 860, thus making Onneca''s daughterToda Aznárez a sexagenarian at the time of her son García Sánchez I''sbirth (which is known to have occurred in either 919 or 922[16]), andnearly a centenarian at the time of her 958 visit to Cordoba. Therefore,most historians addressing the question have concluded that the RodaCodex was in error with regard to the order of Onneca''s two marriages.