This is an old revision of the document!
neglected_genealogy_of_the_martyred_heroins.pdf
“Other noteworthy female fighters related to the Prophet were his favored wife Aisha bint Abu Bakr (614–678) the “Mother of Believers”, who led an army against Ali on the back of a camel at Basra (656)—hence the name of “Battle of the Camel” originated—and his granddaughter Zaynab bint ‘Ali (d. 682), a die-hard fighter whose embroilment in the Battle of Karbala (680) at the side of her martyred brother Imam al-Husayn would later become the symbol of female militancy against injustice among Shi’a Muslims.19 Historical memories around the leadership and fighting skills of these two exceptional women, especially in the latter case, have been essential to (re)-crafting modern gender roles in times of social and political upheaval. The burden of responsibility assumed by sister Zaynab after the death of al-Husayn is, for instance, one of the leitmotif of Shi’a devotional literature produced in nineteenth-century colonial India by Urdu poets like Mir Babar Ali Anis (1802–1874). “Zaynab Made Islam Safe from the Flames”, one of Anis’s most famed nawhas (lit. lamentation-dirge), offers a portray of the woman as an everlasting symbol of assertiveness and endurance in defeat.” (304)