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GABI PLUMM actor, narrator and writer

27/2/2021

One of the real pleasures of using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter is that sometimes you meet really interesting people. The sort of people that you would happily have as a friend in the "real world" and meet up with from time to time to share ideas and have a glass of wine. The chances of my ever meeting Gabi face to face are slim, but one never knows.

Gabi Plumm began life in the UK in the 50s. Her talents as an actor, screen and theatre performer, narrator, writer and editor didn’t take hold until after her second son was born and the suggested emigration to Australia brought forth the startling news that she had been adopted … and never told. Her subsequent search for her birth parents led Gabi to the greatest gift she has received, the knowledge that her talents had a provenance: her mother was a singer, performer, artist and art teacher and her father spoke seven languages fluently. (Gabi only speaks three, but who’s counting?)

The move to Australia, and an amicable divorce propelled Gabi into the writing, editing and presenting of four documentary films: one on the subject of Aboriginal culture and tourism, the other three about the early inhabitants of Polynesia. (To be found in https://vimeo.com/plummtreeproductions ).

The desire to write books appeared while she was studying Creative Writing and Communication at University. It was then that the children’s books — Mumble & Jumble — Magic & Mayhem were began followed swiftly by the first of Teapots Trilogy.

Teapots 1: The Fifth Husband is now available exclusively on Amazon with the audio version presently in production.
Teapots 2: Turning Back the Clock is also available through Amazon exclusively, with the audio version in narration by Gabi at the moment.
The latest Teapots 3: Hideaway House is presently exclusive with Amazon and will eventually have an audio version to accompany it.

Gabi is presently making all the Teapots books into paperbacks.

Apart from working on the audio versions of all her books, Gabi is still available as an editor of novels, and many other texts in all genres, as well as a narrator, and is planning the sequel to the final Teapots book. Can a Trilogy become a Quartet?

You can find out more about Gabi on her social media pages

https://www.facebook.com/gabiplummauthoreditornarrator

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=27131837&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile

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El Cid, hero or turncoat?

22/2/2021

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When I was writing ‘The Prisoner,’ book three in The City of Dreams series, I decided to introduce a new character, a Christian mercenary, named Jabalah. I based him on the legendary El Cid, known to us all through books and films. But the portrayal of El Cid that legend gives us, is not the whole truth.

King Ferdinand I of Castille and León

The situation in Spain during the 11th century, was one of chaos and turbulence. The country was split between the Christians in the north and the Muslims in the south, but it was also divided into dozens of principalities, the taifas of the Moors and the rivalling kingdoms and principalities of the Christians, who fought many battles between each other. However, the Christian kings were often happy to make alliances with the Moorish taifas in order to take advantage of their wealth. Alliances of Christian and Moorish armies fought against rival Moorish taifas, as well as upstart Christian princes. The Christians relied on the Moorish gold, and the Moors relied on the extra manpower supplied by the Christian mercenaries. Many Moorish taifas paid a handsome tribute to a Christian king for his protection. One such example was King Fernando I, the most powerful Christian monarch in Spain at that time, having united a large swathe of the north, including Leon and Castile, Galicia and Asturias. He exacted annual tributes from the Moorish taifas of Zaragoza, Toledo, Badajoz and Seville. These enormous bribes enabled the Moors to hold the Christians at bay and prevented the reconquest of Andalucia for many generations.

This was an era of adventurers and paid mercenaries, men with no loyalty to either religion or state, who fought for gold and power rather than king and country. The common image of these men as chivalrous knights fighting for Christianity is a fiction. By and large, they were rough, brutish, uneducated louts, Even their princes lacked education. They were men of the sword and nothing more. The Moors on the other hand, after centuries of civilisation and comfortable living, were a highly cultured and educated people. Their rulers were not only expected to be warriors, but also poets. They were cultured and well educated, but their armies were depleted and they were a poor match for their Christian adversaries.

Many of these mercenaries formed their own armies and served those who paid them the most. Rodrigo Diaz of Bivar was one such mercenary. El Cid as he became known to his Moorish paymasters, got his name from the Arabic, el Sid, or Seyyid, which means simply master. He was an outstanding warrior and his exploits were soon listed in the chronicles of the period as El Cid el Campeador, The Champion, because he particularly excelled in the bouts of one-to-one combat that preceded a battle. It was customary at that time, for the Champion to march ahead of his troops, and challenge the opposing army to send out their own champion. The two men would fight to the death, and the resulting victory would act as a great motivation to the army of the winner. El Cid’s skill as a swordsman soon became legendary.

But who was he really? When we step away from the myths and legends that surround his name, we can see that he had as many faults as virtues. He would fight for the Moors as easily as the Christians, and neither mosques nor churches were safe from looting.
He was first mentioned in 1064, when as a youth in his twenties, he won his title of Champion after defeating a knight from Navarra in a challenge. This victory got him promoted to Commander-in-chief of the Castillian army, serving first under King Sancho, and later King Alfonso. However, by 1081, he had made so many enemies within the court that the king banished him. Such was his common popularity that when he left the city, he took many of his followers with him, and rode directly to the city of Zaragoza and offered his services to its powerful Moorish ruler.

Sorting truth from fiction is never easy, but the further you go back into the past, the more difficult it becomes. It is even hazier with Rodrigo Diaz of Bivar. To the Spanish Christians he was the hero of the age, a brave, gallant leader of men, a magnificent soldier who fought for Christianity against the infidels, and the Champion of Castille. But when the minstrels sang the songs that were written about him, they forgot to mention that he not only fought against the infidels, but also fought with them, and that his only loyalty was to himself.

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Who owns the Great Mosque of Córdoba?

9/2/2021

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Even if you have never visited the beautiful mosque in the centre of Córdoba’s old city, you will have most probably have heard of it. While I was writing the al-Andalus trilogy, which was set in 10th century Córdoba, I visited it many times. It is a truly magnificent place.

The Mezquita’s fame is widespread, and its history stretches back to the time of the Moors in the 8th century. Work was begun in 785 AD, on the banks of the Guadalquivir, under the orders of Emir Abd al Rahman I. He had bought the site from the Christian community for 100,000 dinars. As was customary in the ancient world, he had chosen a site that already had religious connections; it had been a Visigoth hermitage, before that it was the site of a Roman temple, and from the middle of the 8th century, Christians and Muslims had both worshipped there.

Plan of the Mosque showing when each part was built.

The Moors were a major presence in Spain for over 700 years, but this is the only mosque surviving from that period of history. It is also one of the largest—180m x 130m—having been extended by Abd al Rahman II in 833 AD to cope with an ever expanding population. His successor, Abd al Rahman III was too busy uniting the kingdom and building his new city in Madinat al Zahra to spend money on the mosque in Córdoba--although he did build the orangery.

So it wasn’t until after his death, that his son, al Hakam II undertook another enlargement of the mosque in 926 AD. Then finally in 987 AD, al-Mansor, the de facto ruler of al-Andalus after the death of Abd al Hakam, almost doubled the size of the building. Yet, despite so many additions to this magnificent building over a long period of time, the architects managed to maintain its structural unity.

Plan showing the Christian alterations

Until that is, the conquest of Córdoba by Ferdinand in 1236, when the city was taken over by the Christians. In 1257 the Bishop of Córdoba decided to consecrate part of the mosque as a cathedral.

First-time visitors to the mosque are amazed to suddenly find themselves in a Christian cathedral. Sadly a lot of the additions to the mosque made by Abd al Rahman II and al-Mansur, were dismantled during the creation of the cathedral.

Further work was done to the cathedral in 1523 under the orders of the Bishop and without the consent of the Cathedral chapter. They tried to stop any further changes by threatening them with the death penalty if they did any more work without Royal assent. So the bishop appealed to King Charles I, who gave his consent.

According to rumour, when the king later visited the cathedral, he is reported to have said: ‘I did not know what this was, otherwise I would not have allowed the old part to be changed; because you are doing what can be done elsewhere, whereas you have destroyed something that is unique in the world.’

That was almost five hundred years ago and yet still there is a dispute between the citizens of Córdoba and Church over the great Mosque. A law passed in 1946, during the Franco regime allowed the Catholic Church to acquire thousands of properties in its name. In 1998, the government of the day extended this right to cover places of worship, and the Church swallowed up hundreds of cemeteries, chapels and cathedrals. One estimate is of 4,500 properties. But the most controversial was in 2006, when the then Bishop of Córdoba registered the Mezquita as the property of the Catholic Church, and paid the sum of €30 to do so. It was an attempt by the bishopric to wipe out all traces of Córdoba’s Islamic past and their justification for doing this was that in 1236 Ferdinand III of Castile had decided that the site of the Mosque should be “consecrated and converted into a cathedral.”

But the citizens of Córdoba are not happy. The Mezquita, which was declared a World Heritage Site over thirty years ago, is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Spain. Despite formal complaints by angry citizens, the Spanish Heritage office ruled in 2014 that the Church had done nothing wrong. Then a few years ago the Andalusian regional government commissioned a report on whether it could request the rights to the management of the property. I was unable to find a copy of the report but a summary of its conclusion states that a monument of such national significance cannot be owned by any individual or institution. This puts the Church’s position in jeopardy, but I couldn’t find anything to say that things had changed.

A number of organisations, such as the Navarre Heritage Defence Platform are leading the fight to overturn many of these unconstitutional registrations by the Church.

If anyone has any recent news about the ownership of the Mezquita, please let me know.

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GABI PLUMM actor, narrator and writer

El Cid, hero or turncoat?

Who owns the Great Mosque of Córdoba?

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