She was the last of the rulers of the Sulayhid Dynasty and was also the first woman to be accorded the prestigious title of Hujjah in the Isma'ili branch of Shia Islam, signifying her as the closest living image of God's will in her lifetime, in the Ismaili doctrine.

[4] However, Abbas Hamdani says that early Isma'ili sources do in fact call her Arwa, such as Idris Imad al-Din and one version of Umara al-Yamani's Tarikh.

[2][note 1] Her father (Ahmad) died while she was young (the exact date is never stated) and her mother remarried 'Amir ibn Sulayman al-Zawahi, a member of an allied tribe who would later become one of Arwa's major political rivals.

[6] This was paid by the Ma'nid emirs of Aden, but they later suspended its payment when Ali died, only to be resumed when al-Mukarram Ahmad restored Sulayhid authority there.

[2] Local rulers across Yemen were rising up in defiance of Sulayhid authority, hoping to take advantage of the power vacuum after Ali's death.

According to Fatema Mernissi, Asma had in effect been co-ruler of Yemen alongside her husband Ali during his life, and then was the power behind the throne during al-Mukarram's nominal reign.

[7] Taef El-Azhari, however, says that this assertion is not supported by contemporary sources - while they do portray Asma as a highly esteemed individual, there is only one instance of her actually setting policy: in 1063, when she got her brother As'ad appointed as deputy over the Tihama region.

[1] On the other hand, Delia Cortese and Simonetta Calderini suggest that Umara's account of Asma convincing her son to wage war on another tribe indicates that she did wield political influence during his reign.

[2][6][3][5][note 6] Based on Umara's account, Ahmad's paralysis (or paraplegia) may have been caused by wounds sustained in battle at Zabid against the Najahids at the start of his reign.

[3][2][1][6] According to Husain Hamdani (1931), Ahmad delegated responsibility to Arwa because he "honored the counsel of his wife and had great faith in her shrewdness and intelligence".

[2] The 12th-century account by Umara al-Yamani, however, attributes this decision to Ahmad having "given himself up to the pleasures of music and wine" and wanting to pass off the responsibility of governing to his wife.

[6] Cortese and Calderini say that "while this statement is presented as an expression of her personal reservations, one suspects that it was indeed constructed by the panegyrist Umara as a device to praise her modesty by showing her reluctance to be thrown into the spotlight.

[1] The first and third don't even mention Ahmad, the nominal ruler, indicating that the Fatimids at this point recognized Arwa as the de facto sovereign over Yemen.

[1] Arwa concealed the news of her husband's death and wrote to the Fatimids to request the appointment of her 10-year-old son Abd al-Mustansir Ali as the official new Sulayhid ruler.

[1][note 10] The reply came in a sijill dated to July 1085 and described Arwa as "the one on whom the caliph would depend to guard the da'wah, and to loyally serve Fatimid affairs".

[2] Husain Hamdani writes that Arwa was given full authority over both spiritual and political matters, while Delia Cortese and Simonetta Calderini say that al-Mustansir's decision must have been based on solid theological ground.

[5] Abbas Hamdani similarly says that Arwa's "institutional authority was also more concentrated on 'the temporal side'", and Farhad Daftary says that "the term hujjah was also used in a more limited sense".

[2] Whatever the exact nature of her hujjah-ship was, Arwa now ruled Yemen as regent for her son Abd al-Mustansir, with Lamak in charge of administering the da'wah.

[1] Chroniclers like 'Umara al-Yamani or Idris Imad al-Din never mention any later Fatimid decrees expressing that they were upset with Arwa remaining in power this way, or that they objected to her policies.

[3] She appointed the loyal amir al-Mufaddal ibn Abi'l-Barakat al-Himyari to succeed Saba' as army commander and to guard the royal treasures at al-Ta'kar.

[2] Ibn Najib al-Dawla was able to restore Sulayhid authority over several key castles, but he was unable to retake any major cities like Aden, Sanaa, or Zabid.

[1] Meanwhile, Ibn Najib al-Dawla's victories had apparently inflated his ego, and he tried to stage a coup against Arwa and replace her as leader - he thought she was "old and feeble-minded and needed to step down".

[2] Arwa quickly led a counterattack and besieged his soldiers; meanwhile, she ordered "large sums of Egyptian money to be distributed" to the tribal leaders who were on bad terms with Ibn Najib al-Dawla.

Owing to her patronage of missions, an Ismāʿīlī community was established in Gujarat in the second half of the 11th century, which still survives there today as Dawoodi Bohra, Sulaymani and Alavi.

Hafizi Ismāʿīlīsm, the following of al-Hafiz, intimately tied to the Fatimid regime in Cairo, disappeared soon after the collapse of the Caliphate in 1171 and the Ayyubid invasion of southern Arabia in 1173.

[citation needed] The fact that Arwa had been chosen as hujjah necessitated theological explanations for why the infallible imam would choose a woman for this position.

[5] One source is the Ghāyat al-Mawālīd by al-Sultan al-Khattab, a high-ranking da'i who played an important political and military role in the last years of Arwa's rule.

[7] Samer Traboulsi notes that, as an Isma'ili woman from Yemen, Arwa was a "triply marginalized" figure who was neglected by Muslim historians; and that if not for Ali's sack of Mecca, the medieval Islamic world would not have even heard of the Sulayhids.

[2] Umara described her as "of fair complexion tinged with red; tall, well-proportioned, but inclined to stoutness, perfect in beauty of features, with a clear-sounding voice".

[2] According to Haeri, these accounts would have relied heavily on oral tradition;[2] El-Azhari says these "are based on her later status, thus praising her personality and wide knowledge, but without providing further detail.