spearhafoc: A few months ago, I came across an article talking about the history of the name Califor
spearhafoc: A few months ago, I came across an article talking about the history of the name California, and I was shocked at where the name originated. It seems Cotez had read a fiction book called The Sergas of Esplandian (c. 1510) by Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo, which is in part about an enchanted island called California (named for its Queen Calafia) populated solely by black Amazon women. In the story, Queen Calafia aids the Muslims in the Crusades. The island’s only metal was gold, which meant all their armour and weapons were gold, and this proved ineffective against the then-modern Christian soldiers. The Californians rode man-eating griffins, as well as some other fictional animals. Queen Calafia eventually “reforms” and converts to Christianity out of love for a man. The full text of the book isn’t available as far as I can tell, but the parts relating to the Island of California have all been translated into English and are readily available online. Calafia comes from the same root word as the Arabic word Caliphate, but it was the prospect of finding gold in the real-life California that prompted Cotez to name his “discovery” after the fantastical island. -- source link
#queen calafia#history#medieval#arthurian#*kinda