As elsewhere in the medieval Islamic world, many highborn women in Yemen expressed their piety through their patronage of charitable constructions. The first woman patron in Islamic Yemen was also its first and only woman ruler, al-Sayyida al-Ḥurra bint Aḥmad, also known as Arwa. A major political and religious figure in her own right, she became the effective ruler of the Ismāʿīlī Ṣulayḥid dynasty after her husband's retirement from public life, and the sole ruler for over 40 years after his de…