Sultanah Taj ul-Alam Safiatuddin Syah was the first of four successive queens of the Sultanate of Aceh Dar al-Salam, an Islamic kingdom to the north of Sumatra. Her father, Iskander Muda had conquered Pahang on the Malay Peninsula in 1617, raising…

I have always believed in the possibility of a fertile cooperation between the women of all the continents – since we share the same ideals: to build a better world, based on justice, equality and brotherly understanding between all peoples….

Eventually things will have to get better. However, the way they will improve is not going to be because of the government or the elite leadership, or the political leadership, or the institutions of our country, most of which have…

Lalla Aicha (or Fatima) bint Ali ibn Rashid al-Alami, best known as Sayyida al Hurra, was the governor of Tétouan in Morocco. She is the only woman in the history of that country to have ruled directly in her own…

I have so longed to make the acquaintance of a ‘modern girl’, the proud, independent girl whom I so much admire, who confidently steps through life, cheerfully and in high spirits, full of enthusiasm and commitment, working not just for…

I who had dreamed of a nationalism which will create a happy land of beauty, understanding, and love, I have seen nothing but mutual massacre and mutual hatred; I have seen nothing but ideals used as instruments for creating human…

When I wrote, I imagined my readers sitting before me. I talked and they listened. Some agreed with me. Some didn’t. Some smiled while others got angry, and some felt jealous. Even now, I experience the same feelings. I narrate…

Of mankind’s great misfortunes one is this; that one must take a wife or husband according to the wishes of one’s parents. Taj al-Saltana, one of the daughters of one of the Qajar kings of Iran, is best known for…

I would like to say to my father, my mother, my neighbours in our small neighbourhood, and all I see, or pass by me: I live. Feminist novelist Layla Baalbaki, known as ‘the Françoise Sagan of the Arabs’, is noted…

‘I have been crying for the lowliest creature in India for the last twenty years. Do you know who the lowliest creature in India is? It is the Indian woman’ – Begum Rokeya Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain was a pioneering…

[A] lady of the Turkish feudal nobility who has thrown her yashmak over the nearest windmill and set her heart, Allah knows why, on becoming the first woman painter of her country. – Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid   Fahrelnissa (a name…