Who is Hanum Rabia?
Hanum Rabia is loosely based upon the historical figure Rabia al Adawiyya, an extraordinarily important Sufi saint. Why have I kept her name instead of changing it? Like with the Master Nasruddin character this story employs these very important Sufi figures to honour them and include them in the lexicon of contemporary literature for young people. To me these figures do not only belong in old dusty books that are inaccessible to young people and perhaps unknown until discovered in adulthood. The ethos of Hanum Rabia is to embody and instil sincerity. The details of her colourful history and the high level of spiritual achievement she reached only serve to to make her a legend at the Al Chemya school and a great inspiration to the more ambitious female students in the story.
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It is my hope that by referencing important lady saints like Rabia al Adawiyya that more lady saints and important lady sahaba become more prominent among young Muslims. Sources and stories about them can be hard to find and are often not translated. I think that this can change if there is more interest in them, especially as young Muslim ladies enter academia and wish to know more about the female figures in their own tradition. As you might notice from the Rabia al Adawiyya article on wikipedia scholarship surrounding her story is problematic and I have heard directly from one other female saint that parts of her commonly known story are not correct. For the purposes of Sulayman and the Green Lamp I am trying to stick to the aspects of her legend that are agreed upon and in particular her philosophy.
On our character card I call her “The Judge” because of this philosophical discernment. She marks the difference between sincerity and hidden self service and egotism in her own legend and in the context of our Sulayman series to honour her message over any of her other particulars. I have focused on the bucket and the torch in her iconography for the artwork of the book to further emphasize “The Judge” persona and the contrast of her message. The figure I have chosen is based on an Erte drawing that I particularly liked because it had a power that overrides and gender stereotypes, a bias that Rabia combatted in her own legend, while still a clearly a feminine aspect she does not appear any less for her femininity, if not actually more powerful in this image. What I really wish to convey to young Muslim ladies is that their role models can have an underlying, or even frightening strength. This is why Hanum Rabia is a somewhat feared person at Al Chemya.
If Rabia al Adawiyya is one of your favourite lady saints, as she is mine and you want to share her legend with your children then you will enjoy this character in this book and other books of this series.
