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

140 The Arab Queens
The chroniclers report that she attended the councils of state 'with
her face uncovered'. No veil for a woman who loved her husband
and believed in him, and no false humility for an Arab woman who
had something to say! When 'Ali was officially authorized to declare
himself the sovereign, he presented her with the most royal gift that
can be offered a woman - to associate her publicly with his life, to
acknowledge her as an equal and a partner. The khutba would be
said in her name. The mosques of Yemen would proclaim her name
after the names of the Fatimid sovereign and her husband: 'May
Allah prolong the days of al-Hurra the perfect, who manages the
affairs of the faithful with care.' 1 Such moments in our history
are never chosen as subjects for primary and secondary schools.
Scholastic history is a sequence of conquests and captures of cities
and territories, a series of battles strewn with thousands of dead in
which it would be utterly shameful for the hero to dare to be
thinking about his wife. However, Queen Asma created a veritable
tradition of a couple sharing power, raising her son, al-Mukarram,
in the idea that a wife is a force that it would be absurd to leave
to stagnate in the shadow of the harem. And al-Mukarram made
his wife, 'Arwa Bint Ahmad al-Sulayhiyya, an associate and partner.
The only notable difference between the two queens is the length
of their reign. While that of Asma was very short, that of 'Arwa
lasted more than half a century.
The official title borne by Asma and 'Arwa was al-hurra, a
sovereign woman who obeyed no superior authority. In addition to
these two queens, this title was also borne by al-Malika al-Hurra
Alam, who reigned in the principality of Zubayd, a city near San'a,
which, as we have seen, was in a perpetual state of hostility with
San'a. Al-Hurra Alam was the talk of the town in her time because
at the beginning she was a mere jarya, a singer slave of the king of
Zubayd, Mansur Ibn Najah, before she caught his attention as a
politician of the first rank. Mansur was so 'impressed by her intelligence
and learning . . . that he put the management of the realm
into her hands and made no decisions concerning it without consulting
her. And she discharged her task with distinction.' After the
death of her husband, al-Hurra Alam continued to govern Zubayd.
But, according to the sources, she never had the privilege of the
khutba proclaimed in her name, as did Asma and 'Arwa. As prestigious
as it was, the title al-hurra seems to have been often used
by a good number of women active in the political domain in
Yemen, as it was in the Muslim West in the Maghrib and Andalusia.
But the Yemenis bestowed upon queens a title that was theirs alone