He was raised in the Umayyad Caliphate's most magnificent court. His arrangement in marriage to a Castilian noblewoman will require him to cross every border he knows. Set in Córdoba at the height of the Umayyad Caliphate of Al-Andalus (~970 AD) — arguably the most culturally advanced civilization in Western Europe at the time, a city of libraries, physicians, poets, and architectural wonders — La Estrella de Al-Andalus follows Mansur ibn Tariq, 27, a Black man raised in the court of Caliph Al-Hakam II as a royal ward and eventual court diplomat. His full name reflects his complete identity within Andalusian Islamic culture: he speaks Arabic and the Romance vernacular, participates in the extraordinary intellectual life of the Córdoba court, and is one of the Caliph's most trusted diplomatic voices for relations with the Christian kingdoms of the north. When a treaty with the Kingdom of León requires a diplomatic marriage, Mansur is sent north with a proposal — and finds himself arranging not another man's marriage but his own, to Inés de León, a Leonese princess who has been educated in the unusual tradition of her learned grandmother and approaches the cross-cultural marriage with curiosity rather than dread. Two seasons track their marriage across the cultural boundary between Al-Andalus and Christian Iberia.
S1E1 — La Biblioteca (The Library)
Córdoba in its full magnificence. Mansur in the Caliphal library. The diplomatic mission north announced.
S1E6 — El Primer Invierno (The First Winter)
Mansur in León. His first winter in the Christian north. Inés showing him her Arabic manuscripts. Their first genuine conversation.
S2E12 — Dos Mundos (Two Worlds)
Series finale: The treaty secured. Both cultural worlds transformed by the marriage between them. Mansur and Inés in Córdoba together — she in the library.
