An illiterate-seeming elderly Muslim woman held authority over Granada’s scholars and kings

Evidence

I remained with this Mora until the twelfth of the month of Rabi II, and I later regretted not staying a year, because talking to her was an education for any Arabic scholar. Her way of expressing herself was not very elegant, her sayings were rustic and somewhat down to earth, but insofar as the substance of what she said was concerned, there was not her equal in all the harmony of scholars. This Mora used to rubricate all the missives of the kings of Granada, and the scholars used to call to greet her on the great religious festivals and on special days. What made her great was the affection she showed to everyone, and this must not have been a matter of natural inclination, but of divine providence. She no longer kept the fast of Ramadan, nor did she perform her prayers except sitting down, and she never left home for any reason. As times were so bad for Muslims, this Mora withdrew into the shade of her poverty, and wept for the fall of the Muslims. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 874

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels other cases of female religious authority in Islam (e.g., women hadith transmitters, Sufi shaykhas) — and resonates with the reader’s ongoing interest in how knowledge authority distributes outside formal institutions.