Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

110 Sovereignty in Islam
beginning of the twentieth century. Sultana Tadj al-'Alam Safiyyat
al-Din Shah (1641-75) was the fourteenth sovereign of the dynasty;
Sultana Nur al-'Alam Nakiyyat al-Din Shah the fifteenth (1675-8),
'Inayat Shah Zakiyyat al-Din Shah the sixteenth (1678-88), and
Kamalat Shah (1688^-99) the seventeenth. They reigned despite the
fact that their political enemies had imported from Mecca a fatwa
that declared that 'it was forbidden by law for a woman to rule'. 78
Despite decrees from Mecca, opposition from the caliphs, and the
opportunism of political men, 15 Muslim women sovereigns
ascended the thrones of Muslim states between the thirteenth and
seventeenth centuries, holding all the official insignia of sovereignty.
The first two, Radiyya and Shajarat al-Durr, were Turks belonging
to the Mamluk dynasty. Six sultanas came to the throne when
Mongol princes replaced the Abbasid Arab caliphs at the head of
the Muslim Empire. And seven others were Islamic rulers in the
Maldives and Indonesia. The historian Uc.ok Un found no true Arab
sultana. Women were only able to accede to power when the Arabs
were defeated: 'It was only with the end of the Abbasid state, which
was a major obstacle to women's acceding to the leadership of
states, that women were able to take their seat on a throne.' 79 The
disappearance of the Abbasid state 'opened the road to them and
finally permitted them to come to power.' 80
In her explanation of this, Dr Ugok Un constructs a vision of the
world that is coherent, convincing, and so simple that it seems
irrefutable. But her explanation rests on a factor that is at the very
least disquieting - race. She finds that the Arabs showed avowed
misogynistic behaviour, while the Turks, Mongols, Indonesians, and
Asians in general seem almost feminist. The fact that all the women
who managed to reach the throne, 'except for those in the Indian
Islands, [were] Turks or Mongols is clear proof of the importance
that these cultures gave to women in public affairs.' 81 The problem
with theories based on race is that it only requires the finding of
one exception to make them vanish like soap bubbles. What if we
succeeded in finding one Arab woman head of state? If we
unearthed one or two Arab queens, we would be confronted by
another question: Why have they been wiped out of history? Why
does no one want to remember that there have been Arab women
heads of state?
It is understandable that a non-Arab like the historian Ugok Un,
who wrote in the 1940s at a time when the Arab world was just
beginning to emerge from a long period of Ottoman domination,