The Last Independent Queen in Islamic History
Lalla Aicha bint Ali ibn Rashid al Alami, better known as Sayyida al Hurra (1485 – 1561), which means “free and independent noblewoman” in Arabic, was the ruler of Tetouan in today’s Morocco. She was also a pirate queen who terrorized the waters of Iberia and North Africa. Islamic records are oddly silent about her, but she was a powerful figure of the era, and an equal ally of the famous corsair Hayreddin Barbarossa, who dominated the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century. She was born into a prominent Muslim family in Granada, but when that kingdom fell to the Spanish Reconquista in 1492, fled to Morocco. The Moroccan sultan granted Sayyida and her husband, and their refugee followers, the ruins of Tetouan, a city destroyed by Spaniards.
The couple and their followers rebuilt and restored Tetouan. After her husband died in 1515, Sayyida became its queen – the last queen in Islamic history to rule independently. After years of widowhood, she remarried, and wed the sultan of Morocco. But to emphasize her independence, and to demonstrate that she did not plan to give up her power and position, 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.
