The Warrior Women of Islam.

Female Empowerment in Arabic Popular Literature, by

Remke Kruk. London – New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013. 272 pp. Illus. £15.99 (pbk). ISBN 978-
1-84885-927-2

During the last twenty years, readers have faced a significant growing of characters of Muslim
background in popular superheroes comics distributed in Western countries, in the Middle East,
and beyond. Among this new league of superheroes stands a small but tough group of female
characters fighting side by side their male colleagues, equally equipped with incredible powers.
Dressed in a variety of attires, some of which might not completely meet the taste of Islamic
traditionalists, these women living in otherwise man-ruled phantasy universes challenge not
only the most widespread stereotypes about the role and the position of women in Muslim
countries and in the Islamic society. They also offer a positive counterpart to the sombre
pictures of female mujahidin that seem to have reached the fighting forefront of militant
organisations.
However, the raising of Muslim female superheroines and women warriors in popular culture is
not a recent trend as many might be tempted to believe; it has instead an ancient heart beating
deep and steady in the very body of the Arabian and Middle Eastern literary culture and
folkloric tradition. The analysis of this still understudied phenomenon is the topic of The
Warrior Women of Islam, the new book by Remke Kruk, Professor Emeritus of Arabic at the
University of Leiden. While storytelling in colloquial Arabic is tendentially associated to The
Thousand and One Nights, a large and variegated body of narrative texts known as sīra (geste or
popular epic) exists and widely circulates in the Arab world, only few of them available in
translation so far. It is from this genre of popular literature that Kruk has drawn the material for
her study. Narrating the adventures of Muslim champions, these texts composed in the Middle
Ages have been transmitted and recited in regular public performances by professional
storytellers active until recently as the author records. In numerous cases, the main characters of
these epics are strong and intrepid female heroines.
For fourteen chapters Kruk skilfully leads the reader through the complex plots of five of the
most popular sīra that present warrior women as their protagonists. The first two chapters serve
as a general introduction to the topic and provide the necessary historical and literary
background against which the epics selected by Kruk are set. The rest of the book is dedicated
to the attentive analysis of the epic cycles Sīrat Dhāt al-Himma, Sīrat ‛Antara, the Adventures
of Prince Hamza, Sīrat Baybars, and Sīrat Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan, all composed between the
Twelfth and the Sixteenth Century and all displaying figures of warrior heroines at the centre of
their narratives. A short conclusion helps summarise the main points of Kruk’s investigation;
the bibliography provides a comprehensive list of recent works on the subject, to which Kruk
significantly contributed.
As Kruk evidences, the plots of these epics are extremely intricate and contain several
phantastic elements: beautiful girls with portentous strength, magical weapons, evil sorceress,
and protagonists who grow old but never really age. The parallel that Kruk establishes with
modern soap-operas appears well-fitting due to the characteristic periodization of the stories,
recited at regular intervals by storytellers, and to the sheer unlikeliness of the events portrayed
in the sīra. However, ‘Sīra literature was very popular, and thus must have been instrumental in
shaping people’s perception of history’ (p. 39). In this respect the popularity and the
dissemination of these epics can be functional to the study of pre-modern Arab societies.
Indeed, sīra are still very popular in contemporary Arab societies, with book reprints,
storytelling recordings, and modern TV drama adaptations. Hence, we find the need to consider
them more thoroughly and, consequentially, the importance of Kruk’s research in a field that
has been rather neglected even by specialists.
Kruk offers vivid portraits of female warriors in Arabic popular epics and shows how different
patterns of characterisation were conceivable within the horizon of these complicated plots. In
fact, female heroines appear not only as valiant warriors; they are also protective mothers like
Dhāt al-Himma; beautiful and untameable girls such as Ghamra; treacherous and ruthless
queens such as Qamarīya, or dangerous and unpredictable lovers like the capricious Tāma. By
contrast, the adventures of Prince Hamza offer more traditional and normative views on
womanhood, with female heroines handing over their weapons the minute they get married. All
in all these epics convey a picture of women in pre-modern Islamic societies far less monolithic
that it may be expected. Yet, they were mostly performed by male performers for male
audiences, thus reflecting their fears and desires towards women and female empowerment.
Although female sensitivities appear to have been portrayed with attention it is hard to say how
much this could have reflected actual situations in Arab pre-modern societies. Kruk decides not
to engage with gender issues and only few theoretical remarks have been made throughout the
book.
As Kruk admits, she is mostly interested in telling the stories of these sīra and in showing the
imagery potential that these epics can offer to their audiences. If the book might seem more
descriptive than analytical to some readers, the intents of Kruk are clearly stated in the preface
and her choice appears wise and well-pondered considering how little research has been
conducted on this literary production so far. We can only praise the author for the courage and
the expertise she has shown in digging so extensively in such an unexplored territory and for
having provided translations of many passages from works of which modern editions are not
completely available in Arabic until nowadays. Kruk’s book appears an essential addition to any
reader interested in the diversity of the literary and popular culture in the Arabic language for
the wealth of material it provides and so carefully examines. The final result is a thorough and
attentive study written in a clear prose that makes both an impressive work of scholarship and
an enjoyable reading for specialists as well as for the wide public, a trailblazer for further
studies in the field of Arabic Literature.

Nicoletta Fazio, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg