Queens and Prophets
How Arabian Noblewomen and Holy Men Shaped Paganism, Christianity and Islam
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- $30.99
Publisher Description
‘A genuinely paradigm-shifting work by one of the most exciting and innovative scholars in the field... compelling and powerful...’ Reza Aslan
Arab noblewomen of late antiquity were instrumental in shaping the history of the world. Between Rome’s intervention in the Arabian Peninsula and the Arab conquests, they ruled independently, conducting trade and making war. Their power was celebrated as queen, priestess and goddess. With time some even delegated authority to the most important holy men of their age, influencing Arabian paganism, Christianity and Islam.
Empress Zenobia and Queen Mavia supported bishops Paul of Samosata and Moses of Sinai. Paul was declared a heretic by the Roman church, while Moses began the process of mass Arab conversion. The teachings of these men survived under their queens, setting in motion seismic debates that fractured the early churches and laid the groundwork for the rise of Islam. In sixth-century Mecca, Lady Khadijah used her wealth and political influence to employ a younger man then marry him against the wishes of dissenting noblemen. Her husband, whose religious and political career she influenced, was the Prophet Muhammad.
A landmark exploration of the legacy of female power in late antique Arabia, Queens and Prophets is a corrective that is long overdue.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this enlightening history, University of Houston professor El-Badawi (The Qur'an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions) chronicles female power in Arabia before the dawn of Islam. Contradicting modern perceptions, El-Badawi argues that Arabian queens allied with prophets to shape the region's religious and political culture, and that their legacies impacted the early Christian church, the emergence of Islam in the seventh century, and historical connections between the two traditions. Though their power would eventually be usurped—and legacies overshadowed—by male-dominated empires and religious sectarianism, El-Badawi shows how Queen Zenobia and her theologian Paul of Samosata shaped the theology of the earliest Arabian churches, explores how "warrior-queen" and "bishop-maker" Mavia became the "historical matriarch to an Arab ethos," and suggests Khadijah, the prophet Mohammed's first wife, was also the "mother of the faithful" and a quasi cofounder of a new Middle Eastern monotheistic tradition. Though the author sometimes jumps abruptly between empires and queendoms, El-Badawi presents a convincing case that mothers, queens, and goddesses played a far more important role in antique Arabia than they've been credited. It's a welcome reassessment of female power in late antique Arabia.
