Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace (Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks)

by Irfan Ahmad

Clearly, women held coveted, high positions of power in different parts of the world in the precolonial era. For example, in the eighth century Khayzuran governed the Muslim polity under the reign of Abbasid caliphs. During the eleventh century, Malika Asma Bint Shihab al-Sulayhiyya and Malika Arwa Bint Ahmad al-Sulayhiyya occupied the throne in Yemen. Two centuries later, in the thirteenth century, Razia Sultana ruled in India. In the fourteenth century, three women (Sultana Khadija, Sultana Miriam, and Sultana Fatima) ruled over the Maldives. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Southeast Asia, many Muslim women held power. For instance, during the sixteenth century, Patani, a Malay Muslim kingdom now in Thailand, was ruled successively by four women. From 1641 to 1699, four successive Muslim queens ruled the kingdom of Ache in Indonesia.