← Back to the front page

The Most Formidable Women in History that Made Men Cower Before Them

Khalid Elhassan April 23, 2022 35 min

28. A Tough Moroccan Pirate Queen

Badass Women - Sayyida al Hurra — Sayyida al Hurra. Head Stuff

Lalla Aicha bint Ali ibn Rashid al Alami is better known to history as Sayyida al Hurra (1485 – 1561), which means “free noblewoman” in Arabic. She had been born into a prominent Muslim family in Granada, but when that kingdom fell to the Spanish Reconquista in 1492, her family fled to Morocco. The Moroccan sultan granted Sayyida and her husband, and their Reconquista refugee followers, the ruins of Tetouan, a city destroyed by Spaniards. The couple and their followers rebuilt and restored Tetouan, and after her husband’s death in 1515, Sayyida became its queen – the last queen in Islamic history to rule independently.

In addition to ruling Tetouan, Sayyida was also a pirate queen who terrorized the region’s waters. Islamic records are oddly silent about her, but she was a tough woman and a powerful figure of the era. After years of widowhood, Sayyida wed the sultan of Morocco. However, she was determined to emphasize her independence and demonstrate that she would not cede her power and position. So she refused to leave Tetouan for the wedding. The sultan had to come to her – the only time in Moroccan history that a sultan married outside his capital.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.