"The Manuscript"

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While carrying out renovations at The Alhambra, Granada, Spain, a maintenance worker uncovers a casket from the mid-fourteenth century. This is the period of the latter years of what was once the great al-Andalus empire, now modern-day Andalusia in southern Spain. Historians are excited to find, inside the casket, the journal of al-Jatib, vizier of the young sultan Yusuf I, who is also a renowned poet and medic of his time. The journal is of his visits to the sultan’s ailing grandmother, Fátima, as she lies agonising in the chambers of The Alhambra Palace. The year is 1348. Throughout her long life, Fátima has been witness to no less than the first seven of the sultans of the Nasrid Dynasty, founders of what we know today as The Alhambra Palace, in Granada. The first seven sultans of this dynasty were all close family members to Fátima and historians are delighted to have discovered this document, which has lain under the foundation of the palace for centuries. Is this document simply an account of the establishment of the Nasrid Dynasty, reigning over the al-Andalus empire, or will the document reveal something that has been thus far concealed to our historians for over six hundred years?