Fatima
c. 606–614–633

An emblematic figure in Islamic history, known as Fatima al-Zahra (the pure one), Fatima was the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad (d. 632) and his first wife Khadija (d. 619). She was married to Muhammad's cousin, 'Ali ibn Abu Talib (r. 656), the fourth caliph of Islam (r. 656–661), the fourth caliph of Islam (r. 656–661) and the first Shi'i imam. It is said that Muhammad had insisted that she should be 'Ali's only wife, as Khadija had been his. She was the mother of Hasan (625–669) and Husayn (626–680)—second and third imams venerated by Shi'is worldwide, among other children. After her father's death, Fatima was denied by Abu Bakr (r. 632–634) and 'Umar b. al-Khattab (r. 634–644), the first and second caliphs of Islam, what was considered by Shi'is as well as many other Muslims to be her rightful inheritance: revenues from the land of Fadak. Fatima's vigorous defense of the rights of the family of Muhammad was recorded in medieval sources of differing ideological backgrounds. The denial of the inheritance to Muhammad's only living child was considered a figurative act depicting the repudiation of his legacy by the community. The slaying of Fatima's son, Husayn, by the Umayyad dynasty army came to be considered akin to the biblical Fall, insofar as its influence on the crafting of the language and rhetorical arsenal of Islamic political discourse and worldview is concerned.

The historical persona of Fatima, as it can be reconstructed from medieval sources, can be read in contradistinction to that of 'A'isha (c. 614–678). 'A'isha was Muhammad's favorite wife, who competed with Fatima for the Prophet's affection, and whose father, Abu Bakr, rather than Fatima's husband, won out in the succession disputes that plagued the Muslim community after Muhammad's death. But the rivalry ran deeper: Both women manifested remarkable courage in the public arena, but the emphasis on Fatima's piety and probity in traditional sources (as, for instance in, her oft-cited punctilious observation of the decorum of segregation from unrelated men) is juxtaposed to the more controversial behavior of 'A'isha, whose marriage to Muhammad was fraught with accusations and insinuations.

The iconic similarities between Fatima and Mary, mother of Jesus, as figurative emblems of feminine compassion and courageous resilience, alluded to in many medieval works of exegesis particularly by Shi'i writers since at least the tenth century, also have been explored further and meditated upon from the middle of the twentieth century, most notably by the French Catholic orientalist Louis Massignon (1883–1962). In the latter half of the twentieth century—with the rise of Islamic feminism, connected to both the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 and the subsequent Islamization of the public sphere and sociopolitical discourse throughout the Muslim world—there was renewed interest in the exploration of early Islamic history for the cultivation of Muslim female role models. As part of that endeavor, and while retaining Fatima's image as a model of piety and exemplary motherhood, other traits have been underlined. The influential Iranian religious thinker Ali Shariati (1933–1977), an admirer of Massignon, wrote a polemical and idealized portrayal of Fatima as a determined, resolute, and authentic example of liberated Islamic femininity. This proved particularly important for the modern Islamist platform in Shi'i circles, representing both the centrality of the question of women to a reinvigorated and modern Islamic political theology and the call to discard European and North American customs and mores in order to bolster the anticolonial dossier of the burgeoning Islamist movement.

see also 'A'isha; Islam.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hermansen, Marcia. 1983. "Fatimah as a Role Model in the Works of Ali Shari'ati." In Women and Revolution in Iran, ed. Guity Nashat. Boulder: Westview Press.

McAuliffe, Jane Dammen. 1981. "Chosen of All Women: Mary and Fatima in Qur'anic Exegesis." Islamochirstiana 7: 19-28.

Shari'ati, 'Ali. 1981. Fatima is Fatima, trans. Laleh Bakhtiyar. Tehran: Shariati Foundation.

Spellberg, D. A. 1994. Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of 'A'isha bint Abi Bakr. New York: Columbia University Press.

Veccia Vaglieri, L. 1995. "Fatima." Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd edition. Vol 2, pp. 841-850, ed. P. J. Bearman et al. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill.

                                               Neguin Yavari