The Forgotten Elite

Why should anyone today care how “elite” women were defined in Abbasid history? Because such definitions reveal the deep structures by which Arab societies have long understood power, gender, and legacy. And those structures continue to shape contemporary thought—not just in textbooks, but in politics, education, and culture.

At a recent workshop titled Motherhood and Unfreedom, held at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam, Reem Alrudaini, Associate Professor of Women and Islamic History at Kuwait University, presented a paper that urges a reconsideration of the term “elite” in early Islamic historiography. Titled Elite of Abbasid Women: Reframing the Concept of Elite in Abbasid Women’s Historiography, the paper explores how influence and status have too often been equated with royal lineage or proximity to power through concubinage. Yet the historical reality was far more complex.

Alrudaini invites us to look beyond the usual cast of queens and concubines and instead consider how women in the Abbasid era exercised influence through literary salons, education, religious knowledge, and patronage networks. In doing so, she reframes elite female agency not as marginal or accidental, but as integral to the Islamic world’s cultural and intellectual life.

This shift in historical perspective resonates with ongoing efforts in Saudi Arabia, where scholars and institutions are increasingly revisiting the role of women in Islamic history. From university programs focused on women’s contributions to jurisprudence and poetry, to exhibitions on influential female figures in the Islamic Golden Age, there is growing interest in reclaiming a richer, more complex narrative. Saudi scholars such as Dalal bint Mukhled Al-Harbi have published extensively on the lives of women in the Arabian Peninsula, challenging simplistic assumptions about their absence from public and intellectual life. Her work, including Distinguished Women in the History of the Arabian Peninsula, is central to this reappraisal.

For Saudi and Arab audiences today, these debates matter. As women increasingly assume roles in public life, cultural production, and policymaking, revisiting historical narratives expands the boundaries of what is seen as authentically “ours.” It allows contemporary shifts to be viewed not as foreign impositions, but as continuations of older, locally grounded legacies of female agency.

This is not just an academic exercise—it is cultural memory in motion, helping societies imagine a future that remains in conversation with its past.

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