Egypt's medieval rulers included a woman, the Sultana Shajrat al-Durr ("Tree of Pearls"). She ruled only one year: from 1249-1250. Her husband, the Sultan Ayyub, had died of cancer and tuberculosis. Ayyub's son by an earlier marriage, Turan Shah, had been murdered by a faction of Mamluks loyal to Baybars. Another son, Khalil, conceived with Shajrat, was still a baby when Ayyub died.
"Tree of Pearls" had come from hardy nomadic Turkish stock. Angling unabashedly to rule in her own right, she succeeded in winning enough Mamluk support to have herself proclaimed sultana.
This arrangement did not play well in Baghdad. The insulting response from the caliph Mostassim Billah was: if the Mamluks could not produce a man to rule Egypt, then the caliph would send one. The Mamluks thereupon found a way around the impasse. Aibek, one of the weaker amirs yet strong enough to put up a good appearance, was appointed sultan and Shajrat was given to him in marriage. Interested in real power, not the trappings, Shajrat eagerly consented to the arrangement. So, Aibek assumed the title while Shajrat wielded the power. Sitting behind a curtain in front of her special seat in the Citadel's Hall of Columns, she received ambassadors and conducted affairs of state.
The sidelined and increasingly resentful Aibek began trying to acquire some genuine power of his own. He hit upon the idea of arranging a second marriage with the daughter of the Syrian Amir of Mosul. Besides, he had good reason to be worried about his first wife: an astrologer had warned him he would be murdered by a woman. Aibek was highly superstitious and took the warning to heart. So, he secretly prepared to marry the amir's daughter.
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Wooden Mashribiyya screen, Sharia Muiz al-Din Allah, Cairo
The queen, however, found him out: tipped off by one of Aibek's Mamluks who whispered the news to her in her native Turkish through the wooden mashribiyya (screen) concealing her boudoir. In a jealous rage she resolved to have her husband assassinated. To protect herself from her husband's allies, Shajrat began to consolidate her own power base in Syria by writing a hasty note to one of Aibek's enemies in that province: "Learn this: after putting the Sultan to death, I intend to marry you and place you on the throne of Egypt."
In this drama, it turns out that the men around her had weaker knees than the woman. Fearing he was being lured into a trap either by Aibek or by Shajrat (and not sure which it was), the recipient of the note, albeit a true enemy of Aibek's, nevertheless tipped off the Amir of Mosul who in turn warned Aibek that his wife was plotting to kill him. At this point ensued a royal dowshah ("quarrel") of epic proportions as Aibek confronted Shajrat with her treachery. Leaving the queen's chambers in a rage, Aibek went out to play polo. Afterward, in his bath, five assassins surrounded him and began their grisly task. "Tree of Pearls," however, was suddenly overcome with remorse and begged the murderers to cease. With cool logic at a bloody moment, one of the murderers replied, "If we stop, Madam, halfway through our job, he will kill you and us." The queen felt the force of this remark. The five were told to get on with their work.
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Citadel with Mosque of Muhammad Ali, Cairo
Afterward, guilt-stricken and terrified, the queen tried to spread the word that Aibek had died of natural causes. But, palaces were full of gossip and nobody bought the story. Aibek's personal Mamluks locked up Shajrat in the Citadel with her jewels. In the short time left to her she somehow obtained a mortar and pestle and ground them to dust. Meanwhile, Aibek's son al- Mu'izz, was appointed the next sultan. He delivered the hapless Shajrat to his own queen's handmaidens. After stripping the sultana and insulting her, they beat her to death with the wooden clogs from her bath, and then tossed her body over the walls of the Citadel to the dogs below. Compassionate allies managed to collect her remains and bury them in a small mausoleum which she had built for herself and can be seen today.
Source: Desmond Stewart, Great Cairo: Mother of the World (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1981), 103ff.
Note: Shajrat was not the only sultana in Islamic history. Razziya Sultana is another prominent example.