The “Honourable Ladies” of Nasrid Granada: Female Power and Agency in the Alhambra (1400-1450)

Abstract

A number of powerful women had influence in Granadan politics during the first half of the fifteenth century. Of the seven princesses and ladies who assumed power in some guise in the emirate of Granada, the southernmost point of the Iberian Peninsula where Islam was still vibrant, most of them are known only by their first name. This poses an immense problem for unearthing information about those powerful but forgotten women. Since the 1990s research about the emirate of Granada -known in Christian sources in several languages as the “Kingdom of Granada”- has undergone a revolution both in primary sources and in their interpretation. Some sultans who had not yet been identified because of the absence of systematic sources for their reigns were set in context, and the critical genealogical trees of the Nasrid dynasty were drawn for the first time. However, dynastic history was not as generous with the female characters, who hardly appeared in Arabic chronicles and other genres, and whose letters and records had been lost to historians. Decades of research in the archives have now yielded results, and the figures of these women have begun to emerge.