Women at Their Best

Cleopatra (actually Cleopatra VII) was the last of the Ptolemies, the Macedonian-descended pharaohs who ruled Egypt beginning in 304 B.C. Cleopatra has come down through history less for her administrative skills than for her beguiling ways, which she used in an attempt to keep Egypt free from Roman domination. Among those whom she charmed was Julius Caesar, with whom she had a son, Caesarion. After Caesar’s death, Cleopatra joined forces with Caesar’s colleague Marc Antony; they became lovers and political allies against Antony’s rival Octavian. Octavian’s forces finally defeated those of Antony and Cleopatra in the naval battle of Actium in 31 B.C. The two lovers fled to Alexandria and, faced with defeat by Octavian, committed suicide. Legend has it that Cleopatra died by the self-inflicted bite of a poisonous snake called an asp, though no firm evidence exists to support that claim.

Qura tul Ain Tahira created waves in the history of Iran in 1848. Princess Noor Jehan was a Mughal princess who helped King Jehangir rule Mughal Empire. And Umrao Jan Ada, whose poignant tale of misadventure of a little girl, forced into prostitution; and the saga of 1857 at the center of this tragedy as a testimony are famous in history.

Umrao Jan Ada was a dancer girl of Lakhnow (India) and her fame was at the peak from 1896 to 1899. In 1899, Mirza Hadi Ruswa wrote a novel titled Umrao Jan Ada that was published by Maha Dev Parshad Publishers Lakhnow. In turn, Umrao Jan Ada published a novel titled Fasan-e-Ruswa, which describes the love story of Mirza Hadi Ruswa and a French woman Sophia Augustan. Extracted from Dolls Village