Shajar al-Durr

Drunk Saturday it’s been a long time real talk PhD programs will sap your will to live I’ve been sitting on this one for literally 2 months today’s the day let’s talk about Shajar al-Durr.

-born sometime in the 13th century

-purchased as a slave by a sultan of Egypt whose name I can’t remember and won’t look up because I 100% don’t care fuck that guy

-gives birth to a son, at which point the sultan marries her, wahey, moving up in the world

-at some point Louis IX of France decides he’s going to go fuck around on Crusade in Egypt, and during this the aforementioned unnamed sultan dies of illness. Which is Not Great.

-Shajar recognizes the Not Greatness and hits upon an Idea. So she pretends that Sultan-Who-Gives-A-Flying-Fuck is still alive, just “indisposed,” and has people loyal to her forge letters and shit in his name. They tell his oldest son (by Not Shajar) that his father has died and he needs to get his ass to Egypt because he’s the new sultan, and in the meantime Shajar keeps serving meals to an empty room and being like no really, HE’S ALIVE.

-the French, despite all evidence to the contrary, are not dumb enough to fall for this shit. So they do some battley Crusade things, the details of which are only interesting to Male Historians Of A Certain Age because yaaaaaawn, and in true medieval French fashion they still fucking lose. Shajar is consulted on the various battley plans that Egypt uses to defeat them.

-Finally, 4ish months after the sultan’s death, his son arrives, at which point Shajar announces that oh wow, the sultan has just now died, on the very same day, HOW WEIRD. So there’s a new sultan.

-The new guy? SUCKS. He’s a dick to Shajar, he starts rounding up and running out the people who worked for his father, and he gets drunk and beats on women. Shajar complains to her followers that he’s treating her poorly and ope. New Guy gets assassinated. About 3 months after he finally showed up to take the job. Bye New Guy.

-Shajar is proclaimed sultan by her followers and some others. Another dude wants the job, but her supporters are so resistant that he’s ultimately forced to marry Shajar to make shit work.

-Things go along fine for about 7 years, until 2nd Husband gets mad at Shajar for demanding that he pay attention only to her and not his other wife. For the record there were also political concerns at play here, Shajar and the second wife had wholly different political and ideological alignments, so she was trying to protect her governmental interests. He tries to assert dominance and ope. Shajar has him murdered in the tub. She tries to claim he just up and died but at this point she has a VERY suspicious history, so her servants are rounded up and tortured until they confess to what happened. (It is possible, of course, that she was telling the truth; the use of torture throws suspicion on those ‘confessions.’) Off she goes to jail.

-the second wife and her son have Shajar hauled out of prison and beaten to death, which is an absolutely terrible end

-BUT Shajar lives on in literature, folklore, and the architectural achievements that she revolutionized during her lifetime

-Shajar wasn’t the first female sultan in history, that honor appears to go to Razia, who beat her to it by about 13 years, but it must be said that Razia was the daughter of a sultan and thus of royal blood, while Shajar clawed her way up from the bottom, had so much support that her followers offed 2 sultans for her, and she also fucked up the French, which the fucking English wouldn’t pull off for almost another 200 years, all of which makes her awesome, long live the memory of Shajar