Shi`i hagiographical and Sunni historical traditions devote considerable attention to the special father-daughter relationship between the Prophet Muhammad and his daughter Fatimah, yet much less attention is dedicated to Fatimah’s peculiar kunya umm abiha, “the mother of her father.” Muslims often explain this matronym to mean that Fatimah was exceptionally nurturing toward her father. Certainly, we can find ample evidence of the mutual affection between Fatimah and the Prophet Muhammad. In one hadith, the Prophet declares: “Fatimah is part of me, the light of my eye, and the fruit of my heart. Whatever hurts her hurts me, and whatever pleases her pleases me” (Ibn-e Babawayh, Amali, p. 437). These are the words of paternal love, yet in this paper, I suggest Fatimah’s kunya carries far greater significance. It can be interpreted to mean that she is the mother of prophecy itself. As such, it is but one expression of the unique role occupied by Fatimah, a role that at times accords her a status equal or even superior to that of her father. Drawing upon ethnographic field research in Iran and India, and textual materials both theological and hagiographical, this paper will explore three aspects of Fatimah’s transcendent, eschatological role as conceptualized in Shi`i thought and how they relate to her unique relationship with her father. In particular, this study will reveal how these portrayals of Fatimah serve as an effective counter to notions of the ordinary patriarchal dynamic of female subordination. In this prototypical father-daughter relationship of Islam, Fatimah both reflects the Muhammadan light and sometimes appears as its generator. In other instances, a profound identification exists between her and the Prophet, causing them to appear as one. Fatimah’s divine radiance, combined with the public recognition of her spiritual exemplariness, elevates her beyond her typical subordinate status in patriarchal society. The third feature of Fatimah’s spiritual power is manifested in her eschatological role as al-Mansurah. On the Day of Judgment, Fatimah will intercede on behalf of those who are loyal and weep for her family, and punishing those who displease her. Fatimah al-Zahra constitutes a human form of Divine will exhibited through her embodiment of walayah (transcendent sanctity) and she is made human and real through her enactment of wilayah (socially sanctioned sanctity)—she is the Mistress of the Two Worlds and, thus, the mother of her father.

In his youth the future al-‘Aziz, then merely the third son of the caliph al-Mu’izz, acquired a concubine, most likely a Greek-speaking captive, and produced with her a daughter who was to become the famous Sitt al-Mulk. Not only did her mother remain al-‘Aziz’s favorite long after he rose to the Fatimid throne in 975, she remained so until her death 20 years later, and the daughter continued throughout to hold a claim on his attention many considered unusually intense and extraordinary. Apparently, according to the historical record, he denied her nothing. She moved about accompanied by her own royal guard; the western palace in Cairo was quite possibly built originally as her residence. When the father died she may, if we believe one early source, have contemplated a coup in her favor against the succession of her half brother al-Hakim. In the end, however, she supported him despite signs toward the end of his reign that his erratic behavior threatened to destroy the dynasty. Upon his disappearance in 1021, it was she who managed the succession of her nephew over whom she acted as regent, finally at that point becoming the real ruler of the empire, a fact widely admitted by contemporary and later medieval authorities who often express admiration for her political acumen and sharp intelligence. At her death an obituary commented approvingly: “She had been a patron of men.” Despite some recent work on Sitt al-Mulk, notably a short paper by Heinz Halm, there is more to be gleaned from an array of sources, chiefly the chronicles of al-Maqrizi and Yahya of Antioch, but others as well. Thus she has not, as yet, received as much attention in modern scholarship as she obviously deserves.

Sultan Raziyyah, who ruled the Delhi Sultanate in northern India from 1236 to 1240, is a striking example of a woman who rose to power in a premodern Islamic society. As is commonly acknowledged, it was Raziyyah’s father’s recognition and cultivation of her wisdom and ruling capacities – as well as his apparent naming of her as his successor – that paved the way for her accession to the throne. Relying upon medieval historical and literary sources, as well as feminist theory, this paper will offer an explanation for how Sultan Iltutmish came to groom Raziyyah as his heir and how she was able to rule in an environment in which the birth of daughters normally gave rise to disappointment and women had few, if any, avenues for authority. It will argue that despite medieval Muslim India’s assigning to women a status separate from and normally inferior to that of men, a metaphorical space existed in which women could identify or be identified as men. As in many non-Muslim societies, such an identification could become a means for facilitating a woman’s rise to actual power. For example, the sultan reportedly said of Raziyyah, in justifying naming her as his successor, that “although she is in appearance a woman, yet in her mental qualities she is a man …” (Ahmad, Tabaqat-i Akbari, 1:75). Likewise, Raziyyah cultivated a masculine public image in order to rule effectively. During her reign, she emerged from purdah and donned the tunic and headdress of a man. Interestingly, medieval historians such as Ibn Battuta impute her downfall to an expression of female, heterosexual identity: she supposedly showed inappropriate favor to an Abyssinian who was lord of the stables. Yet no evidence exists that a true breach in ethics occurred, and as has been noted, the story became wildly embellished with every telling. In any event, jealous chiefs arose against her, and after a complicated series of events that included her marriage to a governor who had formerly opposed her, she and her husband lost a battle while attempting to retake her throne and were slain while fleeing. Despite her untimely demise, Raziyyah’s rule was favorably regarded and her grave drew pilgrims seeking the blessings of the slain queen, whose only “flaw” was that she did not truly “attain the destiny, in her creation, of being computed among men.” (Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, 1:638).

In seventeenth-century Mughal, India the patterns of imperial succession, informed by Islamic laws of inheritance, remained specific to male members of the royal family. The oldest son or heir-apparent assumed his father, the emperor’s rank and with it political/fiscal powers. Additionally, each heir to the throne was charged with the responsibility of perpetuating legacies as ‘reifications’ of the imperial past and legitimizing the dynasty’s future. Though Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan’s (1592-1666) reign was plagued by competing sons who made rightful claims to the throne, his oldest daughter Jahan Ara Begum (1614-1681) assumed the rank of the head of the imperial haram by default: upon the untimely death of her mother Mumtaz Mahal in 1631. As part of imperial ideology and practical politics, the ruling house relied on female agency to convey the sovereign’s pietistic and Islamic ‘face’ through ‘public’ acts of patronage, prayer and pilgrimage. Jahan Ara Begum exceeded the imperial charge on her gender by redefining and wielding her imperial powers through prevalent patterns of male authority in the sacred sphere as a piri-muridi and in the secular realm through the commission of a congregation mosque in Agra, the Mughal capital and seat of government and the Mullah Shah Badakhshi mosque in Srinagar, Kashmir. Jahan Ara Begum’s unparalleled rank and authority among royal Mughal women and her ‘gendered’ literary and aesthetic representations in the sacred and secular landscape were facilitated by her considerable fiscal holdings and freedoms assigned by her father who recognized in her persona and abilities her extraordinary political acumen and pious proclivities. The emperor’s official histories and chronicles cite the unmarried princess as the personification of the feminine ‘ideal’ that existed in Shah Jahan’s imagination and symbolized virtue, divine compassion and justice. It was an ideal to which the emperor and Mughal society hoped all women would aspire through Jahan Ara’s imperial and spiritual agency. This paper explores Jahan Ara Begum’s negotiation and cultivation of her imperial and spiritual personas within the mystical tradition of Islam in the sphere of Sufism and how her extraordinary relationship with her father facilitated, sanctioned and ‘represented’ an unmarried imperial woman’s unprecedented ranks of spiritual and imperial authority through her literary prowess and her patronage of the arts in the Mughal landscape.