Khawla bint al-Azwar

Khawla bint al-Azwar, sister of Dirar ibn al-Azwar, is the best-known woman of the Futuh al-Sham ascribed to al-Waqidi, and her familiar image comes from it: a masked horsewoman fighting in the ranks of the conquests. Her story is told here as this book tells it; its ascription to al-Waqidi is open to question (see the attribution of Futuh al-Sham).

The book relates that Dirar was captured in fighting near Damascus by an army led by Wardan, lord of Homs, and that Khalid ibn al-Walid rode out to rescue him. Ahead of him he saw a rider on a tall horse with a long lance, nothing showing but the eyes, wearing black over the armour and girded with a green turban, racing ahead of everyone towards the Byzantines "like a fire". ¹ The rider charged the Byzantine squadrons and came out with a bloodied spearhead; Rafi' ibn Umayra and his men took the rider for Khalid. When Khalid and the Muslims asked the rider to unveil, the rider turned away and plunged back into the fight, until Khalid pressed, and she answered from under the veil "in a woman's voice" that she had turned away out of modesty before him, and that she was Khawla bint al-Azwar: told that her brother had been captured, she had mounted and done what she did. ² She then ranged the battlefield seeking only her brother until noon, and when the armies parted she asked the Muslims man by man for news of him, found none, and wept and lamented him. ³

In another episode near Damascus the book says that Khawla was among Arab women taken captive by the Byzantines, and that the patrician Butrus, brother of Bulus, chose her for himself. She rose among the captives, among them older women of Himyar, and stirred them; Afra' bint Ghifar al-Himyariyya answered her; each woman took up a tent pole, Khawla shouldered one, told them to keep together "like a closed ring" without scattering, and charged at their head. ⁴ Khalid and Dirar then caught up with them; as Butrus turned to flee, Khawla struck his horse's legs and Dirar thrust at him; the account says Hamid ibn Amir al-Yarbu'i counted five men slain by her that day. ^{5 6} When the force rejoined Abu Ubayda at Marj al-Suffar, Khalid told him what Khawla, Afra' and the others had done. ⁶

The book counts her among the women who stood girded before the lines at Yarmuk urging the men on, and gives verses she recited. ⁷ When the women of Lakhm, Judham and Khawlan broke, she went out with Umm Hakim bint al-Harith and Salma bint Lu'ayy and beat them back with poles until they returned to the fight. ⁸ It relates that she charged a Byzantine soldier who struck her on the head with his sword and felled her; Ufayra bint Affan cradled her head on her knee, and her first question was for her brother Dirar; that night she was seen giving water to the men as though nothing ailed her. ^{8 9} The book places Yarmuk, on Makhul's report, in Rajab of the year 15 AH. ⁸

The book says that Dirar was captured a second time in the northern campaigns, and that when the news reached his sister she spoke the formula of return to God and lamented him in prose and verse. ¹⁰ At the end of the first volume Dirar sees a rider scattering the squadrons and crying "Vengeance for Dirar ibn al-Azwar!", and it is his sister; he tells her to ride rein to rein with him and fight. ¹¹

This whole picture is taken from the circulating Futuh al-Sham, a book that an academic study holds to have been redacted between the 12th and 13th centuries CE. ¹² Her mention in the books of generations and biographies has not been checked here.