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

The Criteria of Sovereignty in Islam 83
jahiliyya, the pre-Islamic era. From the ashes of that era was reborn
a misogyny whose roots reached deep down into archaic fears of
femaleness and ignored the Prophet's endeavours to exorcize them
by insisting on the necessity for the Muslim man to share everything
with his wife. The biography of the Prophet, the Sira, always shows
him carrying out with his wives the two most important acts of Islam
from its very beginning: praying and making war. Not only will
there be the fabrication of false Hadith that exclude women from
worship. Memory will be custom-tailored to show that the appearance
of women in the mosque brings disorder and turpitude. And
Nawar, a jarya forced by a despot to appear dressed as an imam to
lead the prayers, will be the example of this that histories have
never failed to mention right up until today.
The appearance of Nawar, a slave singer, at the mihrab (prayer
niche) of the mosque traumatized the people, and for good reason:
she had been sent by a caliph, al-Walid, who was dead drunk, to
lead the faithful in prayer in his place. 40 Al-Walid Ibn al-Yazid Ibn
'Abd al-Malik, the eleventh Umayyad caliph who ruled at the
beginning of the second century of the Hejira (125/743-126/744), is
described by all the historians as the most evil, the most dissolute
in Muslim history. Even the refined Andalusian Ibn Hazm, who
has left us the marvellous essay on love entitled Tawq al-hamama
(The dove's necklace), does not hide his aversion for him and loads
insulting epithets such as fasiq (dissolute) on him. He even put him
on his list of 'caliphs who have a reputation for drinking wine' and
of those 'who were famous for publicly wallowing in sin'. 41
I will leave the description of this blasphemous scene of a jarya
dressed as an imam leading the service to one of the greatest of
Islam's historians, Ibn 'Asakir, the author of Tarikh madinat
Dimashq (History of the city of Damascus). Nawar is the subject
of one of the 196 biographies in his volume devoted to women:
Nawar was the jarya of al-Walid .... She was initiated into the art
of song by the great masters of the time, such as Ma'bad and Ibn
'A'isha. She was al-Walid's favourite. It was she whom he ordered
to go to lead the prayers in the mosque. While he was drunk, the
muezzin had come looking for him to go and discharge his duty
[leading the prayers]. He swore that it would be she who led them.
She appeared to the public veiled and dressed in the vestments
belonging to the caliph. She led the prayers and returned to him ....
Beyond this we have no further information regarding her. 42