The Forgotten Queens of Islam Book

This is a great non-fiction book about 15 Muslim women who held political power over a nation. After the electoral win of Benazhir Bhutto in Pakistan, her opponents refused the results based on the claim that no Muslim women ever held potilical power before. Thus, the author investigated the 15 centuries of Muslim history searching for Muslim Women who held political power. She first introduces her approach in selecting those women and then she presents to us the 15 Muslim women who were political leaders of a nation. The author basically wrote a new lecture of Muslim History through the eyes of a women in order to correct the voluntary and/or involuntary ommissions and errors committed by male historians, whether contemporary or ancient historians.

Any reader interested in the following subjects will find and learn about it in this book:

- Women in Islam,
- History of caplihes,
- Slavery (all categories) in Muslim countries,
- Ancient History of conflicts and differences between Shiites versus Sunnites.

The first 2 chapters of part 3 of the book is more about history of conflict and differences between shiites and sunnites than about the 2 Arab Muslim queens of Yemen.

I wished that due to the rarity of this sort of novel, the author had given us more detailed info about these 15 queens and presented us with other Muslim women who were political leaders even if they didn't match the definition she wrote in the first chapters. As a Moroccan muslim, I learned a great deal in this book that I didn't learn in school.