There is no evidence that Queen Elizabeth II was a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad or his Hashemite clan in the Arabian peninsula, a historian and a British genealogical publisher said.
The allegations about the queen’s family tree are ‘suppositions and guesswork’, he told Middle East Eye (MEE) news portal.
After the queen’s death last week, many reports and posts on social media claimed that the British monarch’s bloodline is related to the Prophet’s family tree through the 11th century Muslim princess Zaida of Seville, a mysterious figure who lived in Al-Andalus.
The reports quoted Burke’s Peerage as the source of the family tree, which connects Queen Elizabeth to the Prophet after a historian wrote an article for a Moroccan news outlet affirming the findings.
However, Burke’s Peerage told Middle East Eye in an email that “unfortunately, we have no genealogical information relating to this. We were not the original source, even though that has been incorrectly repeated over the years.”
The publisher added that Iain Moncreiffe, a British officer and a genealogist, seems to be the source of the claim.
“It would be interesting if historians and researchers could properly investigate the subject,” it added.
However, a TV interview with the former mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa, reemerged to give credit to the claim, according to the Middle East Eye.
Gomaa claimed that the British monarch’s “grandfather” was a Muslim who was forced to become a Christian “during the Inquisition period”, before he arrived in England.
Elizabeth’s actual grandfather, King George V, ruled between 1910 and 1936.
There is also a press release from October 1986 signed by a group called Moslems in Buckingham Palace and syndicated by United Press International (UPI), quoting a letter allegedly written by Harold Brooks-Baker, the director of publishing at Burke’s Peerage, to former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, breaking the news to her about the Queen’s Muslim ancestry.
“The royal family’s direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad cannot be relied upon to protect the royal family forever from Moslem terrorists,” the letter said.
“It is little known by the British people that the blood of Muhammad flows in the veins of the Queen. However, all Moslem religious leaders are proud of this fact,” the letter added.
Source: MEE
