Two related themes interweave the complex tapestry of Arabian history – warfare and the associated cult of the battle queen. As trade moved across set routes, both the defense and the raiding of the valuable goods being moved were a bedouin’s prime occupation, favored sport, lucrative business and unabashed passion. Arabian women in pre-Islamic times often possessed considerable power, and the presence of women in martial encounters was not uncommon. The traveler and historian Sir Richard Francis Burton noted as late as the 19th Century that among the Homerite tribes customary law stated that wives should avenge in battle the deaths of their husbands and mothers their sons. He singled out the Sulliote women who “rivaled the men in defending their homes against Osmanli invaders.”
The emotional center of traditional Arab tribal warfare, the cult of the battle queen was derived from the earliest roots of Arabic culture, evolved through time, and still existed in the 20th Century. It expressed in myth, ritual, song and action the bedouin concepts of the sacred and profane roles of women in warfare.
The battle queen typically emerged from the higher levels of nomad society, a custom that was possibly a vestige of the earlier historical reality of warrior queens in ancient Arab history. She formed the center of the cult, the members of which included ranking women of the tribe, who functioned to incite fiery patriotism, iron resolve, and battle fervor in male warriors. Prior to a raid or battle, the women of the battle queen’s court gathered before a shrine, which had been erected on ground considered sacred to the spirits of their tribe, and sang songs that celebrated valor and the warrior spirit. When the warriors were stirred to a frenzy, the battle queen mounted her camel and led them into battle.
Sometimes the battle queen functioned as a combination cheerleader, symbolic commander in chief, and war goddess. At other times, however, she served as a weapon-wielding combatant or a field general. The center of the battle was always occupied by the battle queen in her litter with her accompanying retinue. She acted as a visual and spiritual rallying point for her soldiers.
In all historical periods, ancient and modern, allowing the battle queen to be taken by the enemy brought terrible shame to an Arab warrior. Her fighting spirit was sacred, as was the camel litter, the hoodah, that bore her into battle. The Rwala, a major tribe of the bedouin, treasured a battle queen ark called the Abu Duhur. They believed that their seers could predict the outcome of battles from the movement of the feathers decorating it.
The women warriors of Arab antiquity burst into history about the 2nd millenium BCE at the time the Arab desert cultures confronted the high cultures of the Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean. The highly literate enemies of the Arabian battle queens often recorded the queens’ names, nations, and battles on monuments, tombs, statues and buildings.
–excerpted from David E Jones, “Women Warriors” ISBN# 1-57488-106-X
