A Slave Girl... Becomes a Great Queen! (Shajarat al-Durr)

We extend the warmest welcome to our friend Mrs. Salma al-Haffar al-Kuzbari, who returns to her literary activity in The Woman's Voice after a long absence, during which she was occupied in preparing studies of certain immortal women, Western and Eastern... We publish below a sample of them, on "Shajarat al-Durr."

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Shajarat al-Durr is among the most famous women of history in the East, and the first and last woman to occupy the throne of Islamic Egypt. She commanded and governed, appointed and dismissed, sent armies to war and signed treaties of peace. Her name was engraved upon the dirhams and dinars, judgments were issued in her name, and prayers were said for her in the mosques, in the middle of the seventh century of the Hegira (the thirteenth of the Christian era).

Some historians count Shajarat al-Durr the first of the Mamluk sultans, because she was the first mamluk woman to sit upon the throne and become a queen to whom millions owed obedience and allegiance, after having been a slave girl bought with money! Others consider her the last of the kings of the Ayyubid state, because she was the wife (1) of the Emir Najm al-Din Ayyub, called al-Malik al-Salih, seventh of the kings of the Ayyubid dynasty founded in Egypt by the great commander Saladin.

The history of Shajarat al-Durr is the history of a slave woman within the history of a nation! She was an owned slave girl before she became the wife of an emir, and a queen. She came to Egypt in the first flush of youth, sent by the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad to the Emir Najm al-Din Ayyub. There are those who say that the Emir bought her among the slave girls he purchased in the days when he was governor of the fortress of Kayfa, on the borders of Turkestan, on behalf of his father al-Malik al-Kamil. The Emir gave her the name "Shajarat al-Durr" after he had studied her closely and found that she was not merely a peerless pearl, but a captivating young woman in whose charms of body and character were gathered pearls beyond price! She enjoyed with him a favor that entitled her to become the sole possessor of his heart and his mind, the voice of counsel and command in his court, then the mother of his child, then his lawful partner. Then it came to pass that she attained the loftiest station and became an uncrowned queen when the Emir Najm al-Din ascended the throne of the Ayyubid state. And at last she seated herself upon the throne in her turn, and the destinies of a nation were bound up with her; and she governed with skill, administration, and good management.

There were gathered in the person of Shajarat al-Durr qualities and powers that fitted her to play an important role in history, and history has written immortality for her, from the seventh century of the Hegira until today and tomorrow. She became famous, when she was a slave girl of beauty and intelligence, for learning and art — for she was skilled in reading, in calligraphy, and in singing — and her fame spread abroad when she became a queen of shrewdness, resolution, and cunning.

Her age was crowded with great historical events. In her reign the Crusaders were broken in their seventh campaign, which they directed toward Egypt: they were routed at the city of Mansura with the worst of defeats, their commanders were killed, and their king, the leader of the campaign — Louis IX, King of France, called Saint Louis — was taken prisoner. He was confined in the house of the Emir Najm al-Din ibn Luqman at Mansura, and Shajarat al-Durr did not release him until he had pledged never to return to invade Egypt, and until his wife Marguerite of Provence had ransomed him with a great sum of money. Al-Malik al-Salih, the husband of Shajarat al-Durr, had died

(1) — Historians differ over the validity of Shajarat al-Durr's marriage to al-Malik al-Salih: some state positively that she became his lawful partner, while others insist that she was only a concubine of his — and God knows best.

while the war between the Muslims and the Crusaders was at its fiercest, and her cunning showed itself in this: that she contrived to conceal the news of his death throughout that critical period, lest the thoughts of the Ayyubid emirs and of the fighting Mamluks turn toward the succession to the throne. To the great men of the state who desired to see him she would say: the Sultan is very ill; no one can be admitted to him. He was buried by night, under the supervision of his private physician, in the citadel of Rawda.

Ceremonies at the royal palace continued in their natural course: letters and decrees were submitted for the king to give his opinion upon them, and came out stamped with his signature; the sultan's table was spread at its appointed times as usual; and orders continued to be issued to the emirs, commanders, and chiefs, bearing the king's seal. Thus this wise woman saw that concealing the news of the king's death was an utmost necessity, until she could take stock of her situation and overcome the powerful enemy, and so that the fighting men's attention should not turn to mounting a throne emptied of its master.

When Shajarat al-Durr observed that the enemy was on the point of defeat, and that the concealment of the news of the death was on the point of dissolving, she summoned her husband's son, the Emir Ghiyath al-Din Turan Shah (her own son Khalil having died in childhood), and issued orders to the chief men of the state to swear him the oath of allegiance. Before his arrival she went on laying war plans with her commanders, supervising their execution, and closely watching the course of the battle at Mansura; and such was her zeal that she joined the townspeople with the soldiers in repelling the enemies' raid and punishing them severely — until it was to her credit that the Crusaders were defeated, that they evacuated the country, and that they submitted to the terms of peace which she dictated to them, including the great ransom they paid, which shattered their treasury. But we —

As for Turan Shah's rule, it did not exceed two months, so greatly did he corrupt, tyrannize, and debauch. He denied, moreover, Shajarat al-Durr's kindness to him and treated her ill, so that she took refuge in Jerusalem; then he sent to threaten her and to demand that she return to him what she had carried off of goods and jewels. He had removed the former men of state from power and had threatened the Mamluks with death; and they, fearing his violence, killed him and proclaimed her sultana over the country. She then ruled with a rule in which she showed every competence and capability. Such was her good statecraft, her firm management, her breadth of knowledge, and the goodness of her repute, that her name was spoken on every tongue in terms of praise, awe, and admiration.

She filled the treasury of Egypt.

She took for herself a series of titles and was called: "The Queen Ismat al-Din Shajarat al-Durr, Umm Khalil, al-Musta'simiyya" — the last in reference to the Caliph al-Musta'sim billah, who sat upon the throne of the Abbasids in Baghdad, and whose recognition she was eager to secure. For it had been a tradition of the house of Ayyub, ever since Saladin took the throne of Egypt and abolished there the doctrine of the Shiite Fatimids, that whoever sat upon the throne of Egypt should seek the Abbasid Caliph's recognition of his rule.

And when she found that her remaining on the throne had aroused against her the people, the house of Abbas, and the Ayyubids of Damascus — who tried to give allegiance to one of their emirs for the throne of Egypt —

she married the Emir Izz al-Din Aybak the Turkoman and ceded the kingship to him in the year 648 A.H., corresponding to 1250 of the Christian era. He was given the title al-Malik al-Mu'izz, while she remained holding fast to the crown and the scepter, the voice of counsel and the wielder of influence.

It is worth mentioning that this Aybak had been the jashnagir in the kitchen of al-Malik al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub, her first husband, in the days when he was emir over the fortress of Kayfa on the borders of Turkestan. Jashnagir is a Turkish word of Persian origin, meaning the taster of food in the palace kitchen.

But Aybak became a commander among the emirs of the Mamluks, took part in several battles, and acquitted himself well in the army of al-Malik al-Salih. Her choice fell upon him because he was of quiet temper, weak in opinion and in personality; so by marrying him and ceding the throne to him she secured herself against the talk of the people and the objection of the Abbasids, while at the same time guaranteeing to herself power and influence without a crown.

When she learned that her husband al-Mu'izz had sent to ask for the hand of an Ayyubid princess, so that she might bear him an heir, and that he had resolved to remove her from the palace of the Citadel and lodge her in the house of the vizierate in Cairo, hoping to prepare the palace for a new era and a new life — he who had reached sixty — Shajarat al-Durr nearly lost her mind from the intensity of her rancor and jealousy. Her fury blazed up; and then she realized, after her removal from the palace to the house of the vizierate, that he would hasten to rid himself of her so as to enjoy his peace of mind. Was this to be her reward for having brought this jashnagir to the throne — that the pride of the queen and the dignity of the woman in her should be wounded??

So she contrived for him a well-laid stratagem: she invited him to meet her, and no sooner had he come, recovered his ease of mind, and entered the bath, than five of her sturdy slave boys fell upon him and killed him. As for her, she took refuge in the Red Tower of the Citadel, after her last attempts had failed to set upon the throne a Mamluk emir in whom she might find protection.

The son of al-Malik al-Mu'izz by his first wife had seized the throne after him, and then avenged his father by ordering her killed. Thus died Shajarat al-Durr in the year 657 A.H., corresponding to 1259 A.D., after having remained for long years the ornament of the court, the wielder of influence, and the most prominent personality in the state, ever since al-Malik al-Salih assumed the throne of Egypt. Her tomb remains to this day a resort for visitors, beside the shrine of Sayyida Nafisa in the Khalifa quarter of Cairo. She had built a great mosque in this quarter, which still stands today and in which the prayers are performed. And in the era of Shajarat al-Durr began the custom of dispatching the mahmal every year from Egypt to the Hejaz in the season of the pilgrimage, carrying the covering of the noble Kaaba and provisions and moneys for the people of God's Sacred House; and this custom continues in practice to our own day.