Queen Arwa al-Sulayhi

Who is Queen Arwa al-Sulayhi?

Arwa bint Ahmad al-Sulayhi was a queen of the Sulayhid dynasty who ruled parts of Yemen for roughly five decades, first alongside her husband al-Mukarram Ahmad and later, after his death, as sole and independent ruler, an unusually powerful position for a woman in the medieval Islamic world. She moved the Sulayhid capital from San'a to Jibla, which she developed into a center of learning and administration, and she held the senior Ismaili religious rank of hujja, giving her both political and religious authority over Yemen's Ismaili community, in coordination with the Fatimid caliphate in Cairo. Under her rule, Yemen saw the construction of mosques, roads, and irrigation works, and she is remembered in Yemeni tradition as a just and capable administrator, sometimes called "the Little Queen of Sheba" by later writers because of the strength and independence of her rule. She continued to govern from Jibla into old age and died there in the early twelfth century. Her long, largely peaceful reign is considered one of the notable periods of political stability in medieval Yemeni history.

Sources: Farhad Daftary, The Ismailis: Their History and Doctrines · G. Rex Smith, The Ayyubids and Early Rasulids in the Yemen · Encyclopaedia of Islam, entry 'Sulayhids'