19. The Medieval Moroccan Pirate Queen Who Wreaked Vengeance on the Spaniards
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 off Iberia and North Africa, and wreaked vengeance on the Spaniards for having expelled her from her birthplace. Islamic records are oddly silent about her, but she was a powerful figure of the era, and an equal ally of the famous corsair Khayr al Din Barbarossa, who dominated the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century.
She was born into a prominent Muslim family in Granada, Spain, but when that kingdom fell to the Spanish Reconquista in 1492, she and her family were forced to flee to Morocco. The Moroccan sultan granted Sayyida, her husband, and their Reconquista refugee followers, the ruins of Tetouan, a city that had been destroyed by the Spaniards years earlier. The refugees 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.
