A "Jewish" Warrior Queen: Kahena

I've written before about the tradition of warrior women (hinds) in Arabia and environs.  Here's a short history of one the Berber queen Kahena. 

His/Her Story: A Jewish warrior queen
08/05/2011 16:18 By RENÉE LEVINE MELAMMED

The story of the Jewish Berber queen, her success as a warrior, and her own destruction.

With the rise of Islam in the seventh century, Arab tribes sought to conquer North Africa and continue to Europe via Spain. The major obstacle to a conquest of the Magreb was the presence of a Berber queen in the mountains of present day Algeria. Her tribe, the Gerawa, had converted to Judaism earlier in the century; their queen, Dahia al-Kahena, daughter of Mathia ben Tifan, either converted with them or was Jewish by birth.

A map of the Maghreb (modern-day)

This era signaled the end of the Byzantine dynasty in a geographical area that was home to Byzantines, Arabs and Jews, as well as Christian Berbers. The fathers of Kahena’s two sons were equally diverse, for one was Berber and the other Greek.

Kahena was a formidable warrior commanding a strong army. Hassan ibn Ne’uman, an Arab Egyptian prince, successfully defeated the Byzantines in Carthage in 687 and set forth to meet her in battle; she defeated him in Tunisia. Arabic lore relates that at the time of her victory, she released all hostages except one, whom she adopted in order to gain his loyalty. (In one version, she breastfed this new son in order to cement his loyalty to her; if he was a soldier, this would have been extremely odd.) Hassan returned to Egypt, where he awaited reinforcements for about five years.

In the meantime, Kahena initiated an unusually cruel policy, ordering the destruction of villages, cities and strongholds in her own kingdom. The rationale for this was to discourage the Arabs from entering this territory. Most likely it reflects the traditional enmity between the Berber nomads and the permanent city-dwellers. (See H. Z. Hirschberg, “The Berber ‘Kahena,’” Tarbiz (Hebrew), 26 (1957).) It stands to reason that this policy paved the path for her downfall.

Interestingly enough, Kahena is sometimes referred to as an augur; according to Arab lore, Hassan was destined to destroy a Jewish soothsayer before he could proceed apace. The meaning of this queen’s name has been debated for years, as to whether it means catastrophe, a major problem or a sly person. “Kahena” could be derived from “kohen,” and thus would refer to a priestess, a prophetess or even a wizard. Perhaps she indeed lived up to her names.

At any rate, most likely at the end of the century, Hassan decided to encounter this warrior once again, having strengthened his forces and having heard that local discontent was widespread. He was confident that he would be victorious this time. Meanwhile, Kahena supposedly foresaw her own demise, including her death in battle; thus she entrusted the lives of her two sons to their “adopted” brother Halid, who supposedly served as a fifth column for Hassan, providing him with information enabling this crucial victory.

The story of the Jewish Berber queen is filled with fact and fiction; lack of contemporary sources makes it rather difficult to always be precise. There are contradictions in different versions: either her sons were killed with her in the battle near a well called Bir al-Kahina, or they remained with their adoptive brother, converted to Islam and conquered Spain together in 711. The latter version seems to be a much more romanticized one befitting medieval Arab historiographical trends. Her age and the duration of her rule are uncertain, although the shortest rule attributed to her is 35 years.

Yet even after peeling away the romanticization, certain facts remain undisputed and are supported by a Judeo-Arabic poem written by local Jews damning her for having created such devastation for her own people. Her success as a warrior stood her in good stead until she chose a selfdefeating means of withstanding a second attack by a strengthened Arab army. Her poor judgment led to her own destruction and that of Byzantine North Africa. The defeat that she suffered cleared the way for the Arab conquest of Spain in 711, the only country in Western Europe to experience Islamic rule.

The writer is a professor of Jewish history and dean at the Schechter Institute as well as academic editor of the journal Nashim. She has published books and articles on Sephardi and Oriental Jewry and on Jewish women.

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Interesting, the speculation about Kahena possibly being an augur and the meaning of her name.  My first thought was that Kahena is a variation of the word hind, after Kore-Diana, the ancestral goddess of the Koreshite tribe.(1)  Alternatively, seeing as she was called Dahia al-Kahena - "the Kahena" ("of Kahena") points to "Kahena" possibly being a title or a descriptive term - perhaps, then, "Dahia the Augur" (or "Dahia of [the] Augur", possibly pointing to a family role or position as tribal augurs). 

An unusual take on this warrior queen can be found at The Afrocentric Experience.  It quotes a description of Kahena as having "dark skin, a mass of hair and huge eyes" - the comment referring to her hair may refer to an afro or perhaps dreadlocks.  Well, that's one interpretation.  Personally, this description just sounds like a typical derrogatory description of a "wild woman" - as my mom says, 'Wild Eyed and Bushy-Haired" = and that's a reference to the very scary Baba (a crone witch or sorcerer) who is of Slavic origin, not a black African.  It has some interesting commentary. 

Wikipedia has an entry on this warrior woman and gives several spelling variations of her name: 

Her real name was said to be Dihyā, Dahyā or Damiya (the Arabic spellings are difficult to distinguish between these variants)^[1]. al-Kāhinat (the female soothsayer) was the nickname used by her Muslim opponents because of her reputed ability to foresee the future.

Of actual biographical facts - basically none.  She had sons - two?  Three?  One of her sons may have had a Greek father.  She took over as a leader of her tribe possibly in the 680's.  Was she of the Jewish faith?  From what I've read, it's extremely unclear. 

That's about .  Did this woman actually exist?  She obviously did because the battles took place, but what her real name was we won't ever know.  According to Wikipedia:  Searching for another enemy to defeat, he was told that the most powerful monarch in North Africa was "the queen of the Berbers" (Arabic: malikat al-barbar)(2) al-Kāhinat.  She may simply have been called Malikat or Queen and, as words often change over time, it became Kahinat.

Unfortunately, the legend of this woman who led a Berber tribe nearly 1400 years ago has been used for various nefarious purposes since people first began writing about her, and it continues to this day.  I think if Kahena could come back, she'd make short work of those who have usurped her name.

Notes:

(1) Walker, Barbara G., The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Hind al-Hunund, at 414.
(2) Arabic malikat brought to mind the child-eating god Melkart or Moloch mentioned in the Bible. 

Women Warriors

I've made a point in this blog of writing about some of the history of women in war and women warriors. It is a tradition that goes back into the mists of time, something about which I am still learning (for we sure didn't study any of this stuff in school!) and now studying. (A few good resources to get you started: "Warrior Women," by Jeannine Davis Kimball, Ph.D.; "Women Warriors: A History," by David E. Jones; "Woman As Force in Long History: A Study in Traditions and Realities", by Mary Beard) Women have always fought, usually side by side with their husbands, fathers and brothers. History has given short-shrift to them, but there are examples from every age of women warriors who have made it into the history books. The thought of women being "too fragile" to fight seems to be a peculiarly late 19th century concept out of the age of Victoria that, at some levels, still seems to hold root in popular imagination in western cultures today but which denies a very different reality. Now, with the advent of "modern" warfare, more women warriors than ever are being injured and killed in the line of duty. This op-ed piece from The New York Times brings home some bitter truths about a different kind of injury in today's reality of women in war: For Women Warriors, Deep Wounds, Little Care By HELEN BENEDICT Published: May 26, 2008 THIS Memorial Day, as an ever-increasing number of mentally and physically wounded soldiers return from Iraq, the Department of Veterans Affairs faces a pressing crisis: women traumatized not only by combat but also by sexual assault and harassment from their fellow service members. Sadly, the department is failing to fully deal with this problem. Women make up some 15 percent of the United States active duty forces, and 11 percent of the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly a third of female veterans say they were sexually assaulted or raped while in the military, and 71 percent to 90 percent say they were sexually harassed by the men with whom they served. This sort of abuse drastically increases the risk and intensity of post-traumatic stress disorder. One study found that female soldiers who were sexually assaulted were nine times more likely to show symptoms of this disorder than those who weren’t. Sexual harassment by itself is so destructive, another study revealed, it causes the same rates of post-traumatic stress in women as combat does in men. And rape can lead to other medical crises, including diabetes, asthma, chronic pelvic pain, eating disorders, miscarriages and hypertension. The threat of post-traumatic stress has risen in recent years as women’s roles in war have changed. More of them now come under fire, suffer battle wounds and kill the enemy, just as men do. As women return for repeat tours, usually redeploying with their same units, many must go back to war with the same man (or men) who abused them. This leaves these women as threatened by their own comrades as by the war itself. Yet the combination of sexual assault and combat has barely been acknowledged or studied. Last month, when the RAND Corporation released the biggest non-military survey of the mental health of troops since 2001, it unwittingly reflected this lack of research. The survey found that women suffer from higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression than men do, but it neglected to look into why this might be, and asked no questions about abuse from fellow soldiers. Terri Tanielian, the project’s co-editor, told me that RAND needs more money to explore these higher rates of trauma among women. As the more than 191,500 women who have served in the Middle East since 2001 return home, they will increasingly flood the Veterans Affairs system. To ask those who need help for post-traumatic stress disorder to turn to a typical Veterans Affairs hospital, built in the 1950s and designed to treat men, is untenable. Women who have been raped or sexually assaulted often cannot face therapy groups or medical facilities full of men. At the moment, the Department of Veterans Affairs operates only six inpatient post-traumatic stress disorder programs specifically for women. And although all 153 department-run hospitals will treat women, only 22 have stand-alone women’s clinics that offer a full range of medical and psychological services. This number of clinics may seem adequate for the 1.7 million female veterans currently at home, especially since they represent only 7.2 percent of all veterans at the moment, but it isn’t. Many clinics are miles from where soldiers live, and many more are open only a few hours a week and lack staff members trained to deal with sexual assault, let alone assault combined with combat trauma. The Department of Veterans Affairs says it plans to open more clinics for post-traumatic stress disorder, but how many will be only for women remains undecided. Women are the fastest-growing group of veterans, and by 2020 they are projected to account for 20 percent of all veterans under the age of 45. Not all of these women will have suffered sexual assault, but many will have medical or psychological needs that conventional department hospitals cannot meet. The Department of Veterans Affairs must open more comprehensive women’s health clinics, designate more facilities for women who have endured both combat and military sexual trauma and finance more support groups specifically for female combat veterans. The best way to honor all of our soldiers is to do what we can to help them mend. Helen Benedict, a professor of journalism at Columbia, is the author of the novel “The Opposite of Love” and the forthcoming “The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq.” ************************************************************************************* I did not publish this piece to denigrate the service of our male warriors. They, too, are being short-changed by inadequate funding of veterans' support and medical services. The situation as it exists today is absolutely appalling! If our President is willing to send our brave members of the armed forces and the armed forces reserves into dangerous combat situations, we as a nation should do whatever it takes and fund whatever it costs to serve them and treat them when they are injured as a result of service for their country. Anything less is just a disgrace, pure and simple. If we have trillions to fight wars in foreign lands, why don't we have trillions to treat and provide services to our veterans? Shame shame on the President. Shame shame on Congress.

The Hind of Hinds - Continued

I want to relate a couple of very interesting "hallucinations" I had last night that are related to the material above and – well, you’ll see where this goes -- I’ve mentioned in earlier posts about how I tend to have hallucinatory "dreams" – not sure what to call the state, exactly, it tends to happens in that area where I’m half awake, or not quite asleep. Last night, or I should say, early this morning, it was between 2 and 3 a.m. when I am prone to wake up these days – anyway, I did my usual, wake up, roll over, look at the clock, roll back to settle into the pillows and I saw what, for the life of me, appeared to be the outline of a bear sitting in my wing chair by the south window. Now darlings, I knew it couldn’t possibly be a bear sitting in my chair, not at 2 in the morning, but it was quite distinctly the outline of a bear, even after I shook my head and blinked my eyes a couple of times and tried to "wake up." It was still there. I laid back down and watched it for awhile; it’s head was moving! It didn’t occur to me until I was having my morning coffee that it was moving in a barely perceptible nodding motion. I was totally stumped as to why this hallucination would not go away even though I thought I was almost fully awake; I fell back asleep – perhaps it was 10 minutes later while continuing to look at the "bear in the chair." It’s a bit hard to explain – this half-baked/half-awake thought process, but since the bear did NOT attack me, I KNEW it was an hallucination, not the real thing (forget about the logic of how a bear would happen to get into a locked house without any noise, happen to wander upstairs into my bedroom, and happen to sit in my chair quietly waiting for me to "wake" up), and so I wasn’t afraid to try and fall back asleep, only annoyed that whatever it was wouldn’t go away. As often happens in these post-menopausal times (women of a certain age in the audience will know exactly what I mean), I then proceeded to wake up about every 45 to 55 minutes for the next couple of hours – sometimes this happens until the alarm goes off at 6 a.m., but last night/early this morning it only happened two more times, and so I was able to get in a last couple of hours of "quality" sleep before the alarm went off. Anyway, when I next awoke, I turned my head and crinked my neck up just to get a look and sure enough, the bear was still sitting in the chair by the window on the south wall. Damn! And still ever so slightly nodding it’s head. I could see it distinctly because my south window overlooks a street light perhaps 50 feet away, and it casts enough light through the curtains to cast eerie shadows inside my bedroom (cue spooky music….) Hmmmmm. Then I rolled over toward the west wall and caught a glimpse of something that set my heart to pounding – a giant serpent! I nearly leaped out of bed -- Of course it wasn’t a giant serpent, it was my "pharmacy" style floor lamp that I have sitting next to the computer hutch, but to my half-awake eyes it took on the form of a gigantic hooded cobra. Hmmmm, a bear and a snake? Very weird. Someone must be trying to tell me something, I thought, as I settled back into my pillows and went back to sleep. OKAY! A bit of back story. The serpent I understand because for the past couple of weeks delion and I have been nattering back and forth about things Egyptian, etc. and I’ve been refreshing my memory by checking out information on Uadjet, the serpent tutorial Goddess of "Upper" (Southern) Egypt, very ancient, who also represents the Sun God (Ra/Re) and, in one of her aspects, is also His Sacred Eye. So the lamp-turning-into-cobra makes sense, in a "dream" way. But the bear? Now, mind you darlings, this all happened before I ever cracked open Walker’s Woman’s Encyclopedia today and copied out the information on "Arabia" published above. As it so happens, when I first opened the book, I came upon an entry of Atalanta: Amazonian huntress, the best athlete in Calydon. As an infant, Atalanta was suckled by Artemis herself, in totemic form as a She-Bear. When she grew up, she took part in the famous hunt of the Calydonian Boar and drew first blood, pausing only to kill two centaurs who tried to rape her on the hunting field. Ah ha! Bells went off in my head. Artemis was the bear! But not only a bear, Walker links her to the "Hind of Hinds" (Hind al-Hunud): "Many Koreshites remained faithful to the Goddess and to their queen, Hind al-Hunud: the Hind of Hinds, similar to the title of Artemis" – but I didn’t know that until I read and then posted the entry on Arabia from The Woman’s Encyclopedia today! So – my admittedly amateur interpretation of my "waking dreams" is that the Goddess (in bear and serpent forms) approve/approved my intent/plan to post more about the ancient battle queens here – even before I knew I was going to do it. Well, they are goddesses, they can "see" the future! A couple notes. Based on what I read in Walker, Fatima, the putative daughter of Mohammed, is a "sister" of the ancient Egyptian cow-goddess Hathor. One of Fatima’s titles is "Red Cow," and Fatima shares many other titles and attributes with Egyptian Hathor. Hathor was also considered a moon goddess, because her horns formed a "crescent" moon. Hmmm, where have we seen that symbol before? Oh yeah, on the flags of many countries where Islam is the majority religion. Hmmm….