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

The Shi'ite Dynasty of Yemen 117
be drowned. The journey into the past in search of these forgotten
queens invites us to take another look at what was inculcated into
us in our adolescence, such as the idea that in order to please men
one has to swoon away in a pretty gesture of submission and
constantly show that one is frail and defenceless. Any show of our
strength and power would supposedly be immediately punished by
the unconditional withdrawal of their love. The history of the
Yemeni queens tells us that that is all rubbish. The pleasures of
love can be combined with the conquest of power. Asma and 'Arwa,
as women, were actively involved in the transformation of their own
lives and that of their community and the world around them.
The Yemeni historians, modern as well as ancient, do not refer
to the reigns of these malikaat (queens) as 'scandalous', but rather
as prestigious and, above all, prosperous moments in their history.
A contemporary Yemeni, 'Abdallah al-Thawr, clearly affirms that
the reign of Malika 'Arwa was a particularly beneficent and peaceful
period in the history of Yemen. 'It is enough for an honest historian
to compare the reign of the imams ... to the relatively very short
period of the reign of a Yemeni woman who held fast to her
principles, loved her people, and was faithful to them, namely
Sayyida 'Arwa Bint Ahmad al-Sulayhiyya,' he confesses in reflecting
on the recent history of San'a, which was governed by imams from
1000/1591 to 1343/1925. In fact the imams did not lose power
completely until the recent revolution and the establishment of the
republic in 1969. He notes that 'Arwa 'left monuments, buildings,
roads, mosques - far more things than a long period of power by
the imams was able to accumulate'. 6 The determining factor in the
historical amnesia seems to be geocultural: not all the Arabs forget
the same things. What they forget depends on the national context,
on regional memory. The Yemeni historians seem to have fewer
memory gaps on the subject of women and power than do the
others. On the contrary, they are proud to claim that they had
women rulers in the past. This little detail indicates the special
regional memories in the Muslim world in general, and the particular
Arab memories in the various regions. The Indonesian Muslim
memory is certainly different from the Moroccan or Senegalese
Muslim memory. And, among the Arabs, it will be fascinating to
explore what events and which historical persons constitute the
landmarks and key persons of regional cultural identity. If the
modern Yemeni historians have no problem in proudly claiming a
woman sovereign as a great head of state and affirming, after an
analysis of the facts, that she was politically much more competent