The Reign of Sultana Khadijah.
After her younger brother is assassinated, Rehendhi Khadijah takes the throne and rules for nearly thirty years across three separate reigns. When her first husband tries to usurp her, she has him deposed and killed. She repeats the manoeuvre with her second. Upon her death, her half-sisters inherit — an unbroken half-century of matriarchal rule in the medieval Islamic world.
The Theemuge dynasty produced something genuinely unusual: three consecutive queens regnant in a medieval Islamic state. The most formidable was Rehendhi Khadijah, who came to the throne in 1347 after her younger brother was assassinated.
She ruled for nearly thirty years across three distinct reigns. When her first husband, Jamal al-Din, tried to use his consort status to seize power, she had him deposed and killed and took the throne back. Decades later she did the same thing to her second husband, Abdullah I, assassinating him in 1376 and beginning her third and final reign.
It was during Khadijah's reign that Ibn Battuta arrived and was pressed into service as Chief Judge. His account names her, describes the workings of her court, and records the speed with which she dismissed him when his strict legal rulings began to embarrass the vizier. He left the islands in a hurry.
When Khadijah died in 1380, her half-sisters Raadhafathi and Dhaain succeeded her in turn — a remarkable half-century of unbroken matriarchal rule. No state in the Islamic world of the period came close to matching it.
Continue the timeline.
- Ibn Battuta, The Travels of Ibn Battuta (trans. H. A. R. Gibb, Hakluyt Society)
- H. C. P. Bell, The Maldive Islands (Ceylon Government Press, 1940)
- Wikipedia — Khadijah of the Maldives
Two thousand years of history — one extraordinary place to experience it.
The atolls in this story are the islands you can stay on today: private-island resorts and overwater villas, planned by a team that works from inside the Maldives.