RAZIYYA, SULTAN 585

study groups, teaching each other languages and history or Preservation efforts have sought to balance the ‘‘authentic’’
reciting poems during the long roll calls. In an unusual with the reconstructed and to acknowledge shifting
cooperative effort between political and other prisoners, postwar approaches to history and memory. Ravensbrück’s
they put on a Christmas party in 1944 for some five hundred proximity to a small town has focused attention on the
children, virtually all of whom were subsequently killed. complicity of local Germans who delivered goods to the
Inmates, generally Communists, working in camp offices camp and socialized with the SS in village pubs; its
tried to save comrades by replacing their names on lists of employment and training of female guards has led to
those selected for death, actions for which, as one Belgian research on female perpetrators. The SS quarters have been
survivor reflected, ‘‘We carry still a necessary Guilt. . . . We renovated as a youth hostel and conference center, and the
sent dying people on transport and gave their numbers to camp’s site has become a center for research about women
healthy people so that they could survive’’ (Walz, p. 228). and gender in National Socialism and the Holocaust.
In late 1944 and early 1945, Ravensbrück became a
[See also Germany; World War I; and World War II.]
full-fledged death camp as a gas chamber began operating
BIBLIOGRAPHY
and women arrived from ghettos and camps in the east.
For general information, see the Web site of the Mahn-und
Hungarian Jewish (and some Roma and Slovakian) women
Gedenksta €tte Ravensbrück, www.ravensbrueck.de/mgr/deutsch/
and Polish civilian women and children captured after home/index.htm. A comprehensive and reliable study is Bernhard
repression of the August 1944 Warsaw uprising crowded Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück: Geschichte eines Lagerkomplexes
into the camp. By late 1944 Ravensbrück held up to 70,000 (Paderborn, Germany: F. Scho € ningh, 2003); lower death statistics
women, and a typhus epidemic raged. Siemens workers are on p. 510. See also entries on Ravensbrück in Walter Laqueur
and Judith Tydor Baumel, eds., The Holocaust Encyclopedia (New
were placed in a separate subcamp, offering some a chance
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001); and Robert Rozett
at survival. Those who were not selected for forced labor and Shmuel Spector, eds., Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New
commandos, either within or outside the camp, came into York: Facts on File, 2000). Loretta Walz, ‘‘Und dann kommst du
the death zone, the infamous tent (Zelt) where the sick and dahin an einem scho €nen Sommertag’’: Die Frauen von Ravens-
weak were selected for gassing and survival was virtually brück (Munich: Verlag Antje Kunstmann, 2005), along with a
film version, was prepared for the commemoration of the sixtieth
impossible. Estimates suggest that 5,000 to 6,000 women,
anniversary of liberation.
many of them Jews weakened by death marches, were On Jewish women, see Linde Apel, Jüdische Frauen im Konzen-
gassed in Ravensbrück. trationslager Ravensbrück 1939–1945 (Berlin: Metropol, 2003);
As the Red Army approached, Himmler’s last-ditch and Rochelle G. Saidel, The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Con-
negotiations with the Swedish count Folke Bernadotte led centration Camp (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004).
Memoirs include Nanda Herbermann, The Blessed Abyss: Inmate
to the rescue of about 7,500 Scandinavian, French, Benelux,
#6582 in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp for Women, translated
and Polish women. The last of the evacuation trains (and by Hester Baer, edited by Hester Baer and Elizabeth R. Baer
busses) to Denmark and Sweden departed on 26 April (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 2000); Margarete
1945, even as death marches with about 20,000 inmates Buber-Neumann, Under Two Dictators, translated by Edward
headed out on 28 April, mostly toward equally catastrophi- Fitzgerald (London: V. Gollancz, 1949); Gemma La Guardia
Gluck, My Story (New York: D. McKay, 1961); and Germaine
cally overcrowded Bergen Belsen. The last SS fled on 29
Tillion, Ravensbrück, translated by Gerald Satterwhite (Garden
April. The Soviets finally arrived in Ravensbrück on 30 City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1975).
April and 1 May, bringing liberation but also a threat of ATINA GROSSMANN
sexual violence to the remaining approximately 3,500
women. The Red Army set up a hospital, but many women
succumbed after liberation. In July 1945 the last of the freed
inmates left the camp.
Postwar Memorialization. After the war, the camp RAZIYYA, SULTAN (r. 1236–1240), sultan of Delhi.
became a Soviet military base and in 1958 a national Raziyya al-Duniya wa al-Din, daughter of Sultan Shams
memorial museum, which honored the suffering and al-Din Iltutmish (r. 1210–1236), succeeded her father after
heroism of Communists and anti-Fascists but not the many the brief reign of her elder brother, Rukn al-Din (r. 1236).
other women from ‘‘asocials’’ to Jews who had been In the history of the Delhi sultanate (1206–1526) the acces-
incarcerated in Ravensbrück. Since the collapse of the sion of a woman to the throne was unprecedented. There
German Democratic Republic and the unification of were other qualified male siblings, potential contenders
Germany, a revamped Memorial and Educational Site to the throne. The chronicler of her reign, Minhaj-i Siraj
has worked, with the active (and sometimes contentious) Juzjani, explained that Raziyya received favor because her
participation of survivors and their descendants, to mother was of high lineage, because she possessed all the
research and present more adequately the history of this great qualities of leadership, and because her father thought
women’s camp and the ways it has been remembered. her better qualified to reign than her brothers. In Juzjani’s
586 RAZIYYA, SULTAN

formulation, when Iltutmish’s military slaves placed Raziyya Hay Habibi, 2 vols. (Kabul: Anjuman-i Tarikh-i Afghanistan,
on the throne, they were only restoring the daughter to her 1963–1964), vol. 1, pp. 457–462, and translated by H. G. Raverty
(1881; reprint, New Delhi, India: Oriental Books, 1971), vol. 1, pp.
legitimate inheritance. Clearly the entrenched political elite
637–648. The earliest account of Raziyya’s relationship with her
of the kingdom of Delhi felt comfortable in their ability to Ethiopian slave is in the mid-fourteenth century text, ˓Abd al-Malik
control a monarch who did not ‘‘have the good fortune of ˓Isami, Futuh al-Salatin, edited by A. S. Usha (Madras, India:
being accounted amongst men’’ (vol. 1, p. 457; translation, University of Madras, 1940), pp. 132–142. These reports were
vol. 1, p. 638). uncritically collated and summarized in later Persian texts. For
general summaries of Sultan Raziyya’s reign in modern accounts
Her gender notwithstanding, Sultan Raziyya displayed
of sultanate history see A. B. M. Habibullah, The Foundation of
striking political initiative. She negotiated with and placated Muslim Rule in India, revised edition (Allahabad, India: Oriental
important military commanders (Kabir Khan Ayaz), she Book Depot, 1976); Mohammad Habib and Khaliq Ahmad Nizami,
neutralized contumacious generals (˓Ala˒ al-Din Jani, Saif eds., A Comprehensive History of India, vol. 5: The Delhi Sultanat,
al-Din Kuchi, and his brother were killed), and powerful A.D. 1206–1526 (reprint, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House,
1982); and Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and
administrators like the wazir Nizam al-Mulk were forced
Military History (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
into retirement. She dispensed offices amid a cadre of 1999). For more detailed analysis of her reign see Peter Jackson,
familiar personnel; it was when she appointed her own ‘‘Sultan Radiyya bint Iltutmish,’’ in Women in the Medieval Islamic
Ethiopian (Habshi) slave, Yaqut, as the master of the horse World: Power, Patronage, Piety, edited by Gavin R. G. Hambly
that her supporters revolted. Raziyya was deposed in favor (New York: Palgrave, 1998), pp. 81–97.
of her brother Mu˓izz al-Din Bahram Shah. Fourteenth- SUNIL KUMAR
century reportage of Raziyya credited excessive familiarity
between Raziyya and Yaqut as the reason for her dethrone-
ment, a reading that eventually gained considerable popular
currency. REDDI, MUTHULAKSHMI (1886–1968), important
In their attempts to explain a woman’s enthronement as a figure in the early middle-class women’s movement in co-
monarch in a patriarchal Muslim society, historians favor lonial India. Muthulakshmi Reddi was born in the princely
widely varying explanations. Some point to the father’s state of Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu on 30 July 1886. At a time
nomination of Raziyya. Others refer to the initiative of the when women were denied formal education, Reddi became
residents of Delhi. It was recently argued that the political the first woman to graduate with a medical degree from
traditions of the Qara Khita (Western Liao), the origins Madras Medical College in 1912. In the same year she was
of some of Iltutmish’s slaves, were more conducive to appointed as a house surgeon at the Government Hospital
women’s exercise of power. It also needs to be kept in mind for Women and Children in Madras (now Chennai).
that Iltutmish’s slaves systematically violated the structures Reddi quickly made her professional success the basis
of symmetrical matrimonial unions prevalent in thirteenth- of an illustrious political career. The first woman to join
century South Asia. Raziyya, daughter of a ruler and herself the Legislative Council of Madras in 1926, Reddi initiated
sultan for a while, was eventually married to the slave many resolutions addressing women’s issues and dealing
Altuniya, another slave married the widow of her father, with women’s sexual health. In 1927, Reddi introduced
and a third married the uterine sister of her brother, Sultan the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Children
Muizz al-Din Bahram Shah. Bill. In 1929 she called for the abolition of the devadasi
The ambiguities surrounding her enthronement notwith- institution in southern India that enabled poor parents to
standing, the actions of the military slaves and Raziyya permanently ‘‘donate’’ their girl children to the gods housed
challenged the structures of early sultanate society that in large temples. In order to shelter destitute women rescued
Muslim jurists were invested in upholding. In Juzjani’s from brothels and former devadasis, Reddi opened the
recapitulation of the event, the innovation that went against Avvai Home in 1930. In keeping with her commitment to
the divinely ordained, gendered social order was bound to safeguard national ‘‘moral hygiene,’’ Reddi, like Mahatma
fail. As he put it: ‘‘In the register of creation since her Gandhi, opposed the introduction of birth control. This
account did not fall under the column of men, how did position set her in opposition to most of her fellow members
she gain from all [her] excellent qualities?’’ (vol. 1, p. 457; in the All India Women’s Congress (AIWC) in the 1930s,
translation, vol. 1, pp. 637–638). who advocated the promotion of contraceptive information
and use. Instead, Reddi called for medical practitioners to
[See also India and South Asia, subentry Medieval impart birth-control information selectively to married
Period.] couples only.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Such contradictory positions continued to characterize
The earliest and most detailed account of Raziyya is available Reddi’s feminist interventions. Reddi was an active member
in Minhaj-i Siraj Juzjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, edited by Abdul of Women’s India Association, serving as an editor for its