Despite living in male-dominated Moorish society during Spain’s medieval period, women often had occasions to shape the course of political events. In the summer of 1359, a coup occurred at Granada’s Alhambra, unseating the young Sultan Muhammad V and forcing him with his mother, loyal courtiers and a cadre of two hundred Christian bodyguards into exile in Morocco for almost three years. The alliance of his mother’s chief rival in the harem with other princes of the realm ensured defeat.
Two queens exemplified the role of ‘the power behind the throne’ during the fourteenth century in Muslim Granada. Like their powerful predecessor Fatima, they gained initial access to influence through the men in their lives who ruled. But the similarities cease there. Unlike Fatima, neither of these women could claim descent from the monarchs of the country. Both women were Christian slaves within the harem of their master or husband, Sultan Yusuf I, the grandson of Fatima. The remarkable ascent of the rivals Butayna and Maryam to the height of the social hierarchy inspired the novels, Sultana: Two Sisters and Sultana: The Bride Price.
How were foreign slaves able to affect the fate of a royal dynasty?
Like the Ottoman political system, slaves in the Muslim world who never secured ransom had unique opportunities to rise above their conditions. For male slaves in Moorish Spain, service in the household of a formidable minister, army commander or sovereign brought such benefits including the chance for conversion to Islam and freedom. Religious law dictated that anyone who abandoned their old faith for the new one could not remain in bondage. There were risks in the choice also. In Christendom, acceptance of another religion meant the death penalty if a former captive returned to his or her homeland.
For female slaves, the most certain route to eventual manumission required the birth of an heir, preferably male, for her master. Upon his death, she would gain her liberty. His faith permitted up to four legal wives and as many concubinesas he wished, all of whom lived within his harem. Although the concept of such an existence has inspired Orientalist fantasies of decadence and vice, harems of the nobility and royalty had rules and an administration. The father of any child born to a female slave held absolute authority and in some periods of Moorish Spain’s history, his relatives raised the child if the mother was non-Muslim.
Historians haven’t discovered the circumstances that brought the women renamed Butayna and Maryam into the harem of Yusuf I, then dominated by his grandmother Fatima. There’s little awareness of the females beyond their Christian origins; their ages, places of birth, original names, etc. have been lost to history. They were among at least five Christian mothers of the Moorish monarchs. Rarely had any captive of the Muslims retained his or her birth name. Butayna meant, “one who possesses a young and tender body” while Maryam’s name might have been transcribed incorrectly, as it could have been Rim. Islam allowed interfaith weddings where the female spouse came from another religion. Chroniclers have referred to both women alternatively as the concubines and wives of the sovereign, but there is one source for Butayna’s marriage.
More certain is that by at least 1337, Butayna had joined the harem, based on the birth of her first son Muhammad on January 4, 1338. Yusuf was twenty when he became a father for the first time. Then on October 2, 1338, Maryam presented him with a second son named Ismail. The male heirs of a Muslim father held equal rights to their inheritances; in this case, both boys were viable candidates for the throne. Subsequently, Butayna gave birth to a girl and possibly another boy, while Maryam had another son and five daughters. Perhaps because of the number of children, the sources speculate that the father favored the offspring of Maryam more. Whatever the truth, Yusuf’s brutal murder on October 19, 1354,at the age of thirty-six altered the lives of the royal family.
The chief minister of the court, backed by a former slave turned official guardian, chose Butayna’s son as the eldest heir of his father to reign as Muhammad V. His great-grandmother Fatima had died six years earlier. Although Butayna’s sixteen-year-old son had attained his majority by Islamic law, she would have enjoyed great influence over him. He provided a separate house for Maryam and her minor children, which removed them from the royal harem. Perhaps the first of Muhammad’s mistakes. He married a cousin, the daughter of his uncle who soon gave him a son. Then he permitted the union of one of his half-sisters with another cousin, descended from one of Fatima’s younger sons.
Together, Maryam financed and plotted a coup with the new brother-in-law of Muhammad. Over one hundred conspirators scaled the palace walls near the end of August 1359. Butayna fled with her son and his companions, including former Christians who served among his personal guardsmen. They first went east to Guadix and then traveled on to Morocco, interestingly without Muhammad’s wife. She then married Maryam’s eldest son who came to the throne as Ismail I.
The means through which Maryam had accomplished her goal did not secure a bright future. Less than twelve months after the 1359 rebellion, her son-in-law and ally ordered the deaths of Maryam and her sons. Then the usurper reigned for two years until Butayna and Muhammad V returned triumphantly to Moorish Spain in 1362. During such time, his former wife had also rejoined him.
Butayna and Maryam are but two examples of slave women who reached the pinnacles of power, at first through their spouse and sons but wielded authority in their own right over the Moorish royal harem. The fictionalized account of their lives is explored in Sultana: Two Sistersand Sultana: The Bride Price, available now.
Lisa Yarde, May 14, 2018
