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

2
The Caliph and the
Queen
A feeling of vertigo comes over me at the association of the words
woman and caliph, and it affects anyone who, like me, has received
a good, solid Muslim education. It is mitigated, without completely
fading away, on reading the historical sources. A good Muslim
education teaches you to be careful in what you say, to put everything
and every person in its place, to respect hierarchies and limits.
Associating the word caliph, the essence of Muslim monotheism,
and the word woman seems blasphemous. History teaches that the
caliph always thought a woman unworthy of exercising even any
inferior kind of power, such as mulk, basely secular earthly power.
As the representative of God on earth and in principle the supreme
source of all delegation of divine authority, the caliph systematically
opposed women becoming head of state, even though they never
laid claim to anything but being a sultana and to managing earthly
affairs. But even that was forbidden to them. The rare women who
were able to rise high enough to want to direct affairs of state found
themselves denied spiritual validation by the caliph each time they
asked it of him. In order to exercise even secular power, without
any claim to administer spiritual matters, a sultan needed the caliph's
stamp of approval, his spiritual benediction. One cannot lead a
Muslim community without some sort of link with the divine, however
pro forma it may be. And being in charge of this link became
one of the functions of the caliphs at the moment when they ceased
to be powerful.
Paradoxically it was by losing his earthly power at the time of the
conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols that the caliph discovered his