Some of the cities and characters mentioned in the book are closely or more distantly based on real cities and characters, particularly a number of people and rulers who did live more or less simultaneously in the late eleventh century. Those that aren't sometimes still have meaningful names if one knows Arabic/Spanish. I noticed the following (some of it with help from Wikipedia), but I'm sure there is more:


Persons:
- Rodrigo Belmonte = Rodrigo Diaz, El Cid (the parts about his towering reputation and his forcing the king to swear an oath of innocence about his brother's murder are true, as is the exile and service to Ragosa, see below)
- Ammar ibn Khairan = ibn Ammar, who was also a poet and politician, with similar rumours of a homosexual relationship with the prince, later king, he served; "khairan" means, intentionally or unintentionally, "good" (or "well", I suppose, it's an adverb)
- Mazur ben Evren: based on Samuel HaNagid, Jewish chancellor to the Muslim ruler of Granada
- King Ramiro: based on king Alfonso VI, though that king reunited his father's split inheritance before invading Muslim territories, not after, and he most certainly didn't reconquer all of Muslim Spain - it took over four centuries after the period of Alfonso VI, El Cid and ibn Ammar for the last Muslim city in Spain to fall
- King Badir of Ragosa: based on Yusuf al-Mu'tamin, the ruler of Zaragoza in whose service El Cid worked for a time
- Yazir ibn Q'arif, of the Zuhrite tribe: based on Yusuf ibn Tashfin; "zuhr" means "(after)noon", for what it's worth
- The Muwardis: based on the Almuravids
- Almalik: means "the king"
- Almalik II, Almalik ibn Almalik: "the king son of the king"

Places:
- Cartada: based on Granada, it would appear
- Al-Fontina palace in Silvenes: presumably the Alhambra (in Granada)
- Silvenes: vaguely based on Cordoba, I suppose, which was the seat of the caliphs and lost much of its significance after the last caliph's death
- Ragosa: Zaragoza
- Esteren: possibly Burgos, or not based on any particular city
- Salos: Lisbon
- Fezana: seems based on Toledo, which was known for its large Jewish population and was conquered by king Alfonso VI; however, the pogrom mentioned in the book happened in Granada, not Toledo
- Sorenica: based on Salonica? The location is way off, but the names are similar, and Salonica did have a large Jewish population, and did get plundered in a crusade (albeit a later one), even if it was by no means exclusively Jewish.
- Esperaña: looks like a combination of España (Spain) and "esperanza" (hope), although "esperar" also means "to wait"
- The rivers Duric, Tavanes, Guadiara and Larrios: based on the Douro, Tajo, Guadalquivir and apparently Ebro, respectively
- Soriyya: Syria (Suriyya in Arabic)
- Majriti: Morocco (Maghrib in Arabic)

Religions:
- Asharites: likely a reference to al-Ash'ari, the great Muslim theologian whose views remain dominant in Sunni Islam to this day