Arwa al-Sulayhi (), () was a long-reigning ruler of Yemen, firstly as the co-ruler of her first two husbands and then as sole ruler, from 1067 until her death in 1138. She was the last of the rulers of the Sulayhid Dynasty and was also the first woman to be accorded the prestigious title of Hujjah in the Isma'ili branch of Shia Islam, signifying her as the closest living image of God's will in her lifetime, in the Ismaili doctrine. She is popularly referred to as As-Sayyidah Al-Ḥurrah (), Al-Malikah Al-Ḥurrah ( or Al-l-Malikah (), and Malikat Sabaʾ Aṣ-Ṣaghīrah ().
As female sovereign, Arwa has an almost unique position in history: though there were more female monarchs in the international Muslim world, Arwa and Asma bint Shihab were the only female monarchs in the Muslim Arab world to have had the khutbah, the ultimate recognition of Muslim monarchial status, proclaimed in their name in the mosques. She founded several mosques, the most prominent of which is Queen Arwa Mosque.
Arwa was the first queen regnant in the Muslim world. Through her title of hujjah, she is the only Muslim woman to ever wield both political and religious authority in her own right.
Her political career can basically be divided into four parts. The first spans the period from her marriage to al-Mukarram Ahmad in 1065 until the death of her mother-in-law Asma in 1074. During this period, there is no evidence that she held any political power. The second begins after Asma's death, and Ahmad began to delegate all power to Arwa at that point until his 1086 death. Third, after his death, Arwa wielded power as queen mother to her son Abd al-Mustansir, and she was also ordered by al-Mustansir to marry Saba' al-Sulayhi (although never consummated) for legitimacy and then was nominally consort even if she held the real power. Finally, after Saba's death in 1097 or 1098, Arwa reigned as sole queen in her own right, with no male nominally in charge.
Name The name Arwa () literally means "female ibex". It is also a traditional Arab name for girls connoting gracefulness, beauty, softness, and liveliness. There is some controversy over whether this was actually her real name – S.M. Stern and Sultan Naji, for example, argue that Arwa's real name was Sayyidah, not Arwa. Stern suggested a possible confusion with a different Sulayhid princess named Arwa, and Naji wrote that she is "wrongly called Arwa". However, Abbas Hamdani says that early Isma'ili sources do in fact call her Arwa, such as Idris Imad al-Din and one version of Umara al-Yamani's Tarikh. The name "as-Sayyidah al-Hurrah", or "the noble lady", is used in these texts as an honorific title "qualifying the name Arwa". Hamdani says Arwa was probably known interchangeably by both names during her own lifetime. Samer Traboulsi argues that the names "Sayyidah" and "Sayyidah Hurrah" are "titles used out of respect" and that Arwa was her actual name.
Sources There are three main sources for Arwa's life. The first is the Ta'rikh al-Yaman, or "History of Yemen", by the 12th-century Umara al-Yamani. Umara was a Fatimid sympathiser, despite being a Sunni, who settled in Egypt in 1164. His book covered the Sulayhid dynasty and influenced later chroniclers like Taj al-Din al-Yamani, Ali al-Khazraji, and Yahya ibn al-Husayn.
The second is the Uyun al-Akhbar wa Funun al-Athar, by Idris Imad al-Din, the 19th Tayyibi Isma'ili da'i mutlaq who lived during the 15th century. Volume 7 of this work was dedicated to the religious doctrinal history of the Sulayhids. His work is important because, as a da'i, he had insider access to sources that would have been off-limits for others.
Finally, there is the sijillat between the Sulayhids and the Fatimids, which are important as a primary source. The Sijillat al-Mustansiriyya, which comprises 66 sijills that were sent from the Fatimid chancery to the Sulayhids, is the main source for this; it found its way to Gujarat in India.
In general, Isma'ili sources have historically been very limited because they have been off-limits to everyone except followers of the da'wah. They are found in Isma'ili libraries throughout Yemen, western India, Iran, and Central Asia but only available to approved adherents. They have also been made available through the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. This has contributed to some of the obscurity surrounding Arwa and her life. Another contributing factor is that Egyptian (such as Ibn Muyassar, al-Maqrizi, and Ibn Taghribirdi) and Iraqi (such as Ibn al-Athir) historians generally paid little attention to Yemen during the Fatimid era.
Life and reign Arwa was born in 1047 or 1048 CE (440 AH) to Ahmad ibn al-Qasim al-Sulayhi and al-Raddah al-Sulayhi. The Sulayhid ruler Ali al-Sulayhi was her paternal uncle. Her father (Ahmad) died while she was young (the exact date is never stated) and her mother remarried 'Amir ibn Sulayman al-Zawahi, a member of an allied tribe who would later become one of Arwa's major political rivals. After her father's death, Arwa was raised in the royal palace under Ali and Asma. The royal couple supposedly realised her intelligence early on and provided her with the best education available. (According to Umara, the Sulayhids in general took pride in providing good education for their women.)
In 1065/6 (458 AH), around the age of 18, Arwa was married to her paternal cousin, the wali al-ahd (crown prince) al-Mukarram Ahmad. This marriage was arranged by Ali shortly after his older son and original heir al-A'azz died. As her mahr, or bride wealth, Ali gave Arwa the net yearly revenue from the city of Aden, which amounted to 100,000 dinars. This was paid by the Ma'nid emirs of Aden, but they later suspended its payment when Ali died, only to be resumed when al-Mukarram Ahmad restored Sulayhid authority there.
Arwa had four children with al-Mukarram Ahmad: Fatimah (d. 1140), who married Ali b. Saba'; Umm Hamdan (d. 1122), who married her cousin Ali al-Zawahi; and two sons Muhammad and Ali who both died in childhood around 1087.
As queen consort In 1067, Ali al-Sulayhi was killed by the Najahid ruler of Zabid, Sa'id. Queen Asma was taken prisoner in Zabid along with several other women. Al-Mukarram Ahmad succeeded Ali as both king and da'i, bringing Arwa to the new rank of queen consort. Local rulers across Yemen were rising up in defiance of Sulayhid authority, hoping to take advantage of the power vacuum after Ali's death. Ahmad spent the next few years campaigning to try to reassert his authority, which he eventually succeeded at doing.
According to Shahla Haeri and Taef El-Azhari, there is no evidence that Arwa was ever in a position of political or religious authority during this period. According to Samer Traboulsi, however, al-Mukarram's absence during his continuous campaigning would have given Arwa a chance to play a political role.
The role of Asma bint Shihab at this point is disputed, as is her influence on Arwa. According to Fatema Mernissi, Asma had in effect been co-ruler of Yemen alongside her husband Ali during his life, and then was the power behind the throne during al-Mukarram's nominal reign. Taef El-Azhari, however, says that this assertion is not supported by contemporary sources – while they do portray Asma as a highly esteemed individual, there is only one instance of her actually setting policy: in 1063, when she got her brother As'ad appointed as deputy over the Tihama region. As a result, El-Azhari says, Asma was probably not a major influence on Arwa's political career. On the other hand, Delia Cortese and Simonetta Calderini suggest that Umara's account of Asma convincing her son to wage war on another tribe indicates that she did wield political influence during his reign. They also point to Ibn Khaldun, who "candidly" wrote that Asma was the one who was really in charge during her son's early reign. Meanwhile, Shahla Haeri says that Asma was "in charge of political affairs and governance, controlling sensitive strategic information and managing all state and financial matters" until her death, and that Arwa "might have learned from Asma simply by observing her or assisting her in her various official duties, given the close relationship between the two women and the ease with which Arwa replaced her mother-in-law after her death".
1074–1084: regency for al-Mukarram Ahmad
Asma died in 1074/5 CE (467 AH), and Ahmad became bedridden due to paralysis soon after. Based on Umara's account, Ahmad's paralysis (or paraplegia) may have been caused by wounds sustained in battle at Zabid against the Najahids at the start of his reign. While Ahmad remained the de jure ruler of Yemen, Arwa became the de facto sovereign as he delegated all power to her.
According to Husain Hamdani (1931), Ahmad delegated responsibility to Arwa because he "honored the counsel of his wife and had great faith in her shrewdness and intelligence". The 12th-century account by Umara al-Yamani, however, attributes this decision to Ahmad having "given himself up to the pleasures of music and wine" and wanting to pass off the responsibility of governing to his wife. In Umara's version, Arwa was reluctant to accept this authority, saying "a woman who is [still] desirable in bed is not suitable for running a state". Cortese and Calderini say that "while this statement is presented as an expression of her personal reservations, one suspects that it was indeed constructed by the panegyrist Umara as a device to praise her modesty by showing her reluctance to be thrown into the spotlight." Umara may have also been uncomfortable with this gender role reversal and needing to find a culturally acceptable rationalisation for it.
In practice, whether Umara's description of her reluctance is true or not, Arwa seems to have had "few, if any, qualms about her gender or the extent of her political authority". Not long after becoming regent, she made two important decisions. The first was moving the capital from Sanaa to Dhu Jibla, further south. Ostensibly this was for medical reasons on Ahmad's behalf. Most likely, however, the decision to relocate was made because the Sulayhids wanted a better capital than Sanaa, "where Sulayhid authority was being eroded". Arwa marched in person at the head of an army to Dhu Jibla, where she enlarged the city and supervised personally the construction of the new Dar al-'Izz palace. She would reside here for most of the year, while al-Mukarram would reside in the nearby citadel of al-Ta'kar.
The second decision she made was the bold move to have the khutbah proclaimed in her name, after those of the caliph and her husband. This is the first time the khutbah was ever said in a woman's name.
In contrast to her mother-in-law, Queen Asma, Arwa did not appear unveiled when she attended councils as Asma had famously done. The reason for this was reported because she was much younger than her mother-in-law, it would have potentially been more scandalous in her case to follow that example. However, although she was veiled, she still attended state councils in person and thus mixed with men, and refused to conduct the meetings hidden by a screen.
In 1075 she made a move against the Najahid leader Sa'id al-Ahwal, leading to "the mother of all battles", as Umara described it. The Najahids were devastated, and Arwa had Sa'id's head displayed directly under her room's window at the palace at Dhu Jibla. This was both to avenge Ali's death and to "show her strength and determination domestically, in addition to eliminating the Najahids in her western territories".