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

The Little Queens of Sheba 153
to pray before the qibla'. 49 It was to her that the Prophet confided
the revelation of his mission, and it was she who accompanied him
when he went to the sanctuary of the Ka'ba to reveal his new
religion to the world. Khadija bore several daughters, and the one
preferred by the Prophet was Fatima. She is considered the 'first
lady' of Shi'ism, and al-Nafs al-Zakiyya in his letter to the caliph
described her as 'the best of women and the first among the noble
ladies of Paradise'. 50 How could the Abbasid caliph respond to such
an illustrious female genealogy?
Caliph al-Mansur's reply, which based his legitimacy on his
descent from the Prophet through a man, his uncle al-'Abbas, was
simple, logical, and above all correct:
I received your letter and read your remarks .... Actually your
whole argument rests on your pride in your descent through women.
And God did not put women on the same level as uncles and
fathers .... Indeed you are the descendants of the Prophet through
his daughter, but she had no right to inherit the wilaya [political
succession], and she did not have the right to be imam. So how can
you inherit from her something to which she had no right? 51
According to the Abbasids, the claims to power of those descended
from 'Ali are completely unfounded, because the transmission of
the caliphate through women is impossible. Women, excluded by
definition from the major leadership of the state (al-imama alkubra),
cannot transmit it.
It should be pointed out that, based on the principle of the
primacy of Fatima, some Shi'ites developed different inheritance
laws. In homage to the memory of Fatima, one of the extremist
sects, known as the Ghurabiyya, went so far as to make the daughter
the sole heir, thus violating the Sunni shari'a, which gives her only
half the share that goes to the son. 52 The Ghurabiyya, which was
based in the city of Qum, threatened to kill a brave qadi who
insisted on the necessity of applying the shar'ia and ordered that
the daughter be given only half of what went to her brother. 53 The
qadi found out to his cost that a female's place in inheritance is not
the same in all cases. For example, when a man dies leaving a
daughter and a grandson (the son of his son), the shi'a excludes the
grandson from inheriting and gives the whole remaining fortune to
the daughter, which is an aberration for the Sunnis. According to
the latter, in this case the fortune is divided into two equal parts,
one going to the daughter and the other to the grandson. 54