The Veiled Commander

Khawlah Bint Al-Azwar, a young woman who accompanied her brother and his army during their campaigns, served as a nurse and tended to injured soldiers’s wounds to allow them to return to battle quicker. During one of these campaigns, at the Siege of Damascus, her brother Dhiraar Ibn Al-Azwar, commander of the muslim army, was taken captive by the enemy. She would not accept the thought of her brother wasting away in an enemy cell, leading her to don heavy armor and hiding behind a veil as she replaced her sibling in the frontlines…

Bloody Rescue

Khawlah battled fiercely, earning the respect of the general Khalid Ibn Walid to whom she revealed her true identity. Instead of being condemned for her deception, the general sent her on a new task: to lead a battalion into the enemy camp and retrieve her captured brother. Not only was she successful in getting her brother back, the battalion she led freed every captured muslim, women included, from their Byzantine captors and together, fought and defeated the enemy soldiers in the bloody skirmish that followed.