Sayyida al Hurra

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Lalla Aisha bint Ali ibn Rashid al-Alami للا عائشة بنت علي بن رشيد العلمي‎
A depiction of Sayyida al-Hurra, in the Qasbah Museum (Tangier, Northern Morocco)
Governor of Tétouan
Rule	1515/1519[1] – 1542
Predecessor	Sidi al-Mandri II
Born	c. 1491–1495[2] Chefchaouen, Morocco[2]
Died	1552-1562 Chefchaouen, Morocco
Spouse	Sidi al-Mandri II ​ ​ (m. 1501; died 1515)​ [3] Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ​ ​ (m. 1541; died 1549)​
Dynasty	Wattasid (by marriage)
Father	Ali ibn Rashid al-Alami
Mother	Lalla Zohra Fernandez[4]
Religion	Sunni Islam

Lalla Aisha bint Ali ibn Rashid al-Alami (Arabic: للا عائشة بنت علي بن رشيد العلمي), also referred to as Sayyida al-Hurra (السيدة الحرة, transl. The Lady, the Free Woman), was a Moroccan privateer (of Andalusian origin) who governed the city of Tétouan from 1515 or 1519 to 1542.^[5][6] As the wife of Moroccan king Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad, who was her second husband, she belonged to the Wattasid dynasty. She is considered to be "one of the most important female figures of the Islamic West in the modern age."^[7]

Her exact date of birth is unknown, but various sources estimate her to be born somewhere between 1491-1495.^[8][9] Likewise, there is a lot of discussion surrounding her death; some say she died in 1552, while others place her death a decade later (1561, 1562).^{[2][10][11][12]}

The era of her life and career was largely marked by a widespread struggle between the Christian world and the Muslim world: the Ottoman Empire had conquered Constantinople in 1453,^[13] ending the Eastern Byzantine Empire; the Portuguese Empire had begun conquering ports along the western Moroccan coast around 1487; and the Reconquista had returned the Iberian Peninsula to European Christian rule by 1492, eventually leading to the expulsion or forced conversion of Muslims in Spain.^[14]

Al-Hurra split control over the Mediterranean Sea with her ally Hayreddin Barbarossa,^[15] an Ottoman corsair who operated in the east while she operated in the west.^[16] In 1515, she became the last person in Muslim history to legitimately hold the title "al-Hurra" following the death of her first husband Sidi al-Mandri II, who ruled Tétouan. Her marriage to her second husband marks the only time in Moroccan history that a king married away from the capital city Fez, as al-Hurra refused to leave Tétouan.^[7][17]