In a recent post, it was mentioned that princesses did things like run spy rings to expose traitors. Can we get a run-down on that, please?

Reporting for duty! :)

The Fatimid dynasty gets its name from Fatima, Muhammad's favorite daughter. So it's fitting that women at the Fatimid court, inside and outside the harem, did some really awesome things in service of the caliphate.

You have to be a shade prudent when interpreting the place of women in chronicles and other sources from this era (tenth-eleventh centuries CE). Especially when describing women in rival factions, their roles and actions are often heavily propagandized, to the point of legendary. However, there is ample evidence of an actual tradition at the Fatimid caliph's court of women close to the caliph and his most trusted advisors running spy rings or acting as spies themselves.

One of the earliest examples is early 11th-century princess Sitt al-Mulk, the caliph's sister. She operated her servants outside the palace as information gatherers. The interesting ting about al-Mulk's efforts is that her targets were also women--not for their own knowledge, but for what they themselves had heard from others.

But an even better story doesn't technically involve a royal spy herself, but rather the (sadly, nameless) mother of vizier al-Afdal. Al-Afdal, however, was the de facto ruler of the caliphate (he had engineered the selection of a child instead of the presumed heir, thus giving himself far more influence in ruling). So I think this more or less counts as royal women spies.

Al-Afdal's mother lured out traitors via entrapment. Schmoozing with soldiers and high-powered men at mosques and markets, she pretended to be the mother of a dead soldier in al-Afdal's army. She would denounce al-Afdal and the child caliph to the soldier, hoping to draw out confessions of similar sentiment.

With both Sitt al-Mulk's network of gossip girls and the entrapment schemes of al-Afdal's mother, a crucial point to remember is that we're talking about espionage by older women, not Disney Princess types. Older age--especially past menopause, especially widowhood--brought more flexibility to the lives of free women in the Middle Ages (although always bounded by class most of all). Al-Afdal's mother initiated conversations with men at the mosque and no one blinked an eye.

Nevertheless, their activities show a remarkable consistency over the Fatimid period in terms of women claiming a rightful place for women, and women's stories.