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

22 Queens and Courtesans
supreme role of head of state? One of the great debates that has
agitated the Muslim world since the death of the Prophet concerns
the ethnic origin of the caliph: must he be an Arab or can he come
from any other ethnic group, that is, can he be an 'ajamil 'Ajami
refers to foreigners, literally those who cannot speak Arabic correctly,
who either speak it badly or have not mastered its subtleties.
Among the many non-Arab heads of state who have taken power
throughout the centuries, Persians, Mongols, Berbers, Kurds, Sudanese,
Indians, or others, rare have been those who claimed any
other title than sultan or malik, or some variation of these. The
assumption of the title of caliph by the Ottomans in the sixteenth
century came as a violent shock. A caliph has to prove a link to
the Prophet, and for a Turk that becomes a rather awkward matter.
It is necessary to resort to fiction, and the Ottomans were obliged
to do just that.
Every Muslim head of state who claims the title of caliph has to
solve the problem of his descent from the Prophet, to certify a
family tree that links him to the Prophet's descendants, that is, to
the children of his daughter Fatima and her husband 'Ali. One of
the standard forms of challenge used by rebels against the Arab
caliphs, first the Umayyads and then the Abbasids, was precisely
to claim filiation going back to the Prophet. Obviously those who
ventured along this road put their life in danger and ended by being
physically done away with, for there could be only one caliph. And
the Umayyad caliphs, as well as the Abbasids, were going to preserve
order on earth and in Heaven by cutting off the heads of all
pretenders to their title. The Abbasids, who were Sunnis, began
their decline the day they failed to liquidate a Shi'ite pretender who
proclaimed himself caliph in 297/909. He was al-Mahdi al-Fatimi,
who founded a second dynasty of caliphs, the Fatimids (named for
Fatima, the Prophet's daughter). Having two caliphs at the same
time, one Sunni and the other Shi'ite, was absolutely incongruous
with the Muslim ideal, which is directed toward unity as the way to
ensure strength. In order to succeed, the Fatimids had to operate
far from Baghdad. They started in North Africa, and it was only in
358/969 that they transferred their capital to Cairo and laid hold of
Egypt and Syria. All this goes to show that declaring oneself caliph
is not something lightly undertaken by just any powerful man. The
idea that this is a privilege reserved for exceptional beings is deeply
rooted. For a woman to claim it would be an act of delirium, and
to my knowledge no woman has ever been so lacking in good sense
as to consider it.