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Page 2 of 4 The very first battle queen ever written about was Hind bint Utbah or “Hind al-Hunud”, the Hind of all Hinds, her clan. She was from the Quraish tribe (same tribe as Mohammed’s) of the kingdom of Kindah. A very controversial and dynamic woman, a priestess of the local Lady of Victory cult, she was the daughter of a prominent leader in Mecca. With her husband, Abu Sufyan who was chieftan of Mecca, she waged a terrible war against Mohammed at the battle of Badr in 624 AD. They felt that Mohammed was a political threat and were ferociously opposed to Islam. Hind led her people in this and other battles carrying a great broadsword. They lost this battle and her father, brother and uncle were killed. After the next battle of Uhud which she won, she was reported to have had her soldier cut out Mohammed’s uncle’s liver (or heart) and tried to chew it. (She spat it out and later said she regretted having even done this deed.) It is also said that she stood on a mound surrounded by the corpses of her enemies, boasting of her fighting skills. Afterwards, she and her husband led guerilla warfare-like attacks on the Islamic troops for a short time but soon were out-numbered and surrounded. Abu gave Mecca to the prophet which infuriated Hind to the point that she ordered her husband’s death for treason and cowardice. He appealed to their people saying they should convert to Islam. She converted soon after and ended up becoming a very close companion to Mohammed.
Another quite noteworthy battle queen is the most famous female Arab poet, Tomader Bint Amre al-Sharid called Al-Khansa. She converted to Islam and fought in the Battle of Qadisiyah where all four of her sons died. She wrote, “Praise be to Allah! May I join them in heaven”.
To understand the next subject in this article I need to give a short history lesson on the area called Arabia. The word “Arabia” is actually greek, but, it could be of semetic origin: “arabah” meaning “wilderness” and “ereb” meaning “mix of people”. To simplify a rather complex story, we can divide the Arabic lands into south and north. After a long time of many separate nomatic tribes and clans, the peoples started to unite into the Kushites (Ethiopeans, Nubians, Abyssinians) in the south and Abraham’s descendants from his concubines in the north: from Hagar (Egyptian) came the Ishmaelites and from Qeturah (origin unknown), the Midyanites. Before Islam these tribes were mainly matrialineal. This means that women owned land and homes, decided whether or not to divorce and carried the family name. Men moved into their wives houses and children were named after their mothers. Some women even had more than one husband but not the other way around until Mohammed came along. Most of the rulers were women, as well. From Woman’s Encyclopedia, pages 51-54: “Before Islam arrived in the 7th century A.D., Arabia was matriarchal for over a thousand years of recorded history. The Annals of Ashurbanipal said Arabia was governed by queens for as long as anyone could remember. The land’s original Allah was Al-Lat, part of the female trinity along with Kore or Q’re, the Virgin, and Al-Uzza, the Powerful One, the triad known as Manat, the Threefold Moon.”
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