Two Castilian political myths and al-Andalus

The thirteenth-century Poema de Fernán González recounts how the Count Fernán González obtained the independence of Castille thanks to a skilful bargaining for a horse and a falcon with the king of León. It also tells us that the ancestor of the Count was one of the two judges who had ruled Castille during the vacancy of royal power following the death of King Alfonso II of Asturias (d. 842). Those two judges were known by names that refer to the lack of hair in their heads: Laín Calvo and Nuño Rasura. While the story of the horse and the falcon has already been connected to an Islamic context, the second has not. This paper shows how the narrative of the bald judges of Castille is illuminated by the history of al-Andalus and, more generally, it emphasizes that when studying the political myths of Medieval Christian Spain, al-Andalus needs to be taken into account as one among other providers of literary tropes on rulers and ruling.