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

30 Queens and Courtesans
violation of the rules of the game. The meaning of this orthodoxy
obviously varies in different epochs and places, depending on the
culture and the interests of those who have the power of the
sword and can extort taxes. But this one constant endured
throughout the empire and its states: as soon as a woman came
close to the throne, a group whose interests she threatened
appeared on the scene and challenged her in the name of the
spiritual, the name of the shari'a. This was true even when she
operated in an obviously unstable revolutionary context, as did
Shajarat, who emerged when former slave Mamluks decided to
take over.
One exception, perhaps, was Radiyya, another Turk, who took
power in Delhi a decade before Shajarat al-Durr and who owed her
rise to her father, Sultan Iltutmish, originally a slave who came to
power through his own merits. It was he who established Muslim
sovereignty over India and who decided to name his daughter as
his heiress, despite having three sons. The religious authorities,
whom he liked to surround himself with and who were very influential
in the country, tried to dissuade him. 10 That did not keep
Radiyya from acceding to power. But opposition in the name of
the spiritual was latent and was brandished by her rivals during her
reign.
Nor did Indonesian queens escape this obstacle, despite their
geographical and cultural distance from Baghdad. Four of them,
however, managed to hand down power to each other in the Atjeh
empire in the northernmost part of Sumatra at the end of the
seventeenth century. Not surprisingly, they faced religious opposition,
which contested their right to rule, on the basis of a fatwa
brought all the way from distant Mecca. 11 Nevertheless these
Indonesian queens monopolized power until the beginning of the
eighteenth century. They bestowed on themselves lavish titles that
would have scandalized the Abbasid al-Musta'sim. The first
(1641-75) called herself very humbly Taj al-'alam safiyyat al-din
shah (Crown of the world, purity of the faith); the second (1675-8)
chose the name Nur al-'alam nakiyyat al-din shah (Light of the
world, purity of the faith); the third (1678-88) chose an exotic half-
Persian title, 'Inayatshah zakiyyat al-din shah', the fourth (1688-99),
Kamalat Shah, ruled tranquilly until the dawn of the eighteenth
century. 12
Women, then, have reigned over the lands of Islam and directed
their governments, but always in violation of the spiritual principles
that underpin and legitimize political authority. Why? We know