Shahla Haeri. The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority, Gender.

Abstract

In The Unforgettable Queens of Islam, Shahla Haeri explores the political ascendency of four Muslim women: two medieval, Queen Arwa of Yemen and Razia Sultan of India, and two modern, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Megwati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia. Haeri looks to undermine essentialist narratives of orientalists and indigenous fundamentalists. She focuses on three main factors in these women’s political ascendency: their personal charisma and popular appeal, common patriarchal succession, and family connections. She particularly focuses on the strong bonds between these powerful women and their equally powerful fathers. To lay the groundwork for her accounts, she first explores women’s leadership in the primary sources of Qurʾan and hadith, through the Qurʾanic story of the Queen of Sheba and the biography of the Prophet’s wife ʿAʾisha bt. Abu Bakr. This work represents Haeri’s decades of interest in women’s political leadership, initially sparked by the election of Benazir Bhutto. It is an ethnohistory that is both passionate and personal, while ultimately highlighting the structural factors at play in questions of succession, power, and authority.