Mozarab living in the taifa kingdoms of Toledo and Cordoba in al-Andalus from 1020 to 1070, katib to Walladah for part of that time. Mozarabs are urban, largely middle class, Christians who have acculturated into Islamic society, dressing similarly and speaking Arabic as well as their own Romance dialect, but maintaining their own religious cultural traditions. I come from a family of civil servants. The taifa kingdoms are the many localized Muslim territories that resulted from the collapse of the unified Umayyad Caliphate that ruled al-Andalus, the Muslim territory of the Iberian Peninsula. The taifa kingdom of Zaragoza hosted El Cid, now the national hero of Spain, during his exile from Castile, and he later ruled the taifa kingdom of Valencia. The taifa period was a golden age of cultural creativity and social mobility in terms of poetry, music, and visual arts, as the many royal courts vied to attract artists, poets and courtiers. As katib to a Muslim noblewoman, I served as personal secretary and was expected to participate in the literary salons hosted by Walladah, extemporizing Arabic poetry and displaying other courtly arts.
Çida is my title in Mozarabic, related to "Sayyida" in Arabic and the masculine "Cid" in Spanish. I am particularly fond of blue, which is a color sometimes associated specifically with Christians in al-Andalus. And I am particularly fond of the Tree of Life motif, as well as various Islamic geometric motifs.