Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes

by Tamim Ansary

The story of King Sancho illustrates how the various communities got along. In the late tenth century CE, Sancho inherited the throne of Leon, a Christian kingdom north of Spain. Sancho’s subjects soon began referring to him as Sancho the Fat, the sort of nickname a king never likes to hear his subjects using with impunity. Poor Sancho might more accurately have been called Sancho the Medically Obese, but his nobles could not take the large view. They regarded Sancho’s size as proof of an internal weakness that made him unfit to rule, so they deposed him. Sancho then heard about a Jewish physician named Hisdai ibn Shaprut who reputedly knew how to cure obesity. Hisdai was employed by the Muslim ruler in Córdoba, so Sancho headed south with his mother and retinue to seek treatments. The Muslim ruler Abdul Rahman the Third welcomed Sancho as an honored guest and had him stay at the royal palace until Hisdai had shrunk him down, whereupon Sancho returned to Leon, reclaimed his throne, and signed a treaty of friendship with Abdul Rahman.1 A Christian king received treatments from a Jewish physician at the court of a Muslim ruler: there you have the story of Muslim Spain in a nutshell.