Matronage

Shajar al-Durr’s life is reflected in her architecture, coinage, and accounts of her deeds. Seen through the comparative methodological lenses of the historian and the art historian, the two modes of documentation tell different stories about power and gender. Written accounts dismiss her as a political anomaly whose autonomous rule was brief, whereas the material record indicates that she continued to play a role in politics even after her abdication. Her architectural patronage shows her to have been an innovator who changed the communicative potential of Islamic architecture to express the identity of the patron.