Sovereign Women in a Muslim Kingdom - by Sher Banu a L Khan (Paperback)

About the Book

In Sovereign Women in a Muslim Kingdom, Sher Banu A. L. Khan provides a fresh perspective on the women who ruled in succession in Aceh for half the seventeenth century. Khan draws fresh evidence about the lives and reigns of the sultanahs from contemporary indigenous texts and the archives of the Dutch East India Company. The long reign of the...

Book Synopsis

In Sovereign Women in a Muslim Kingdom, Sher Banu A. L. Khan provides a fresh perspective on the women who ruled in succession in Aceh for half the seventeenth century. Khan draws fresh evidence about the lives and reigns of the sultanahs from contemporary indigenous texts and the archives of the Dutch East India Company.

The long reign of the sultanahs of Aceh is striking in a society where women rulers are usually seen as unnatural calamities, a violation of nature, or even forbidden in the name of religion. Sovereign Women in a Muslim Kingdom demonstrates how the sultanahs' rule was legitimized by both Islam and adat (indigenous customary laws). Khan provides original insights on the women's style of leadership and their unique relations with the male elite and foreign European envoys who visited their court. This book calls into question received views on kingship in the Malay world and shows how an indigenous polity responded to European companies in the age of early East-West encounters during Southeast Asia's age of commerce.

Review Quotes

...Sovereign Women is an invaluable study, adding considerably to our knowledge of early modern Aceh.

-- "Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal"

There is no doubt that Sher Banu A. L. Khan's book is a very welcome contribution to the study of early modern Southeast Asia and will remain an important reference work for seventeenth-century Aceh in the future.

-- "Journal of Early Modern History"

About the Author

Sher Banu A. L. Khan is Assistant Professor of Malay Studies at the National University of Singapore.