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Tala al-Zahra outside the Barn after Great Court at Pennsic in 2017. Photographer unknown.
Tala's POV is that of an Amazigh woman of Jrāwa lineage, which claims Dihya ("al-Kahina" the warrior queen) as a foremother. She lives in the city of Fes during the Marinid Dynasty (13th-16th centuries CE). Tala is a well-educated, literate woman. Her family have long been merchants and traders, but her father took up the law thereby cementing her status as a member of the Fesi middle class.
In the SCA, Tala studies a variety of subjects, including (but not limited to): linguistics, onomastics, philosophy, epigraphy, natural sciences, and archery. She is currently the Deputy-President of the Atlantian Madrasa Guild and the Minister of Arts & Sciences (MoAS) of the Barony of Highland Foorde. She is also the founder and coordinator of the Maghribi Track and the African Track at Pennsic University.
Outside the SCA, Tala is known as Rachel Kay. Rachel lived and worked in a Moroccan, desert oasis from 2008-2010. Accordingly, when she joined the SCA in 2011, she began developing a North African Amazigh (aka, "Berber") persona.
Rachel has been medically-retired since 2020 due to disabling MEcfs. She is a national advocate for MEcfs research & funding, and a proud, disabled Scadian. Rachel previously worked internationally in education policy & practice, program coordination, and data analysis. She currently lives with her partner (Benedict Bainbridge, mka Pete) in Maryland -- in the SCA, this is within the Barony of Highland Foorde in the Kingdom of Atlantia.
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