Top 10 African Warrior Queens History Tried to Erase

Summary

• Amanirenas of Kush fought Rome from 25 or 24 BC. Augustus then granted her envoys their demands and cancelled Rome's tribute in a treaty signed at Samos in 21 or 20 BC (Strabo, Geography 17.1.54, early 1st century AD)
• Njinga ruled Ndongo and Matamba from 1624 until her death on 17 December 1663, about 39 years, and at her peak in the 1640s governed almost a quarter of modern northern Angola (Linda Heywood, Njinga of Angola, Harvard University Press, 2017)
• Ranavalona I's forces repelled a joint French and British attack on Tamatave, Madagascar, on 15 June 1845; the attackers lost 21 killed and 53 wounded (UK National Archives, citing the log of HMS Conway)
• About 100,000 Ethiopian troops defeated about 20,000 Italian-led troops at Adwa on 1 March 1896. Empress Taytu Betul had pushed for the war and is credited with cutting the water supply at Mekelle weeks earlier (South African History Online, 2024; History.com, 2025)

Selected Details About Each Queen on the List

1. Amanirenas (Kush, modern Sudan)

Ruled c. 40–10 BC; went to war with Rome in 25 or 24 BC and won a treaty in 21 or 20 BC that cancelled Rome's tribute demands (WorldAtlas, 2026; Strabo, Geography 17.1.54). While Egypt's Roman governor was away in Arabia, her forces took Syene (Aswan), Elephantine and Philae and pulled down statues of Augustus. Strabo, a Roman-side writer, says the Roman counter-attack used fewer than 10,000 infantry and 800 cavalry against 30,000 Kushites. He describes the queen he calls "Candace" as blind in one eye. One looted bronze head of Augustus was buried under the steps of a victory shrine at Meroë so that visitors would walk over it. It was dug up in 1910 and is now in the British Museum (University of Liverpool, 2018). Rome wrote the only account and used her title rather than her name; historians identify her from Kushite inscriptions.

2. Dihya, known as al-Kahina (Aurès, modern Algeria and Tunisia)

Defeated the Umayyad general Hassan ibn al-Nu'man at the Battle of Meskiana in 698 and held off the Arab conquest of the region for about five years (ADF Magazine, 2023). She is believed to have come to power in the 680s, and her exact dates of birth, rule, and death are unknown. Later Arab chroniclers say she was killed around 702–703 and her head was sent to Damascus. "Al-Kahina", meaning the seer or priestess, was a name given by her enemies. Historian Abdelmajid Hannoum shows that since the 9th century her story has been retold by Arab, French colonial, Berber nationalist, Jewish and feminist writers, each shaping her to suit their cause (Hannoum, Colonial Histories, Post-Colonial Memories, 2001).

3. Idia (Benin, modern Nigeria)

Mother of Oba Esigie, traditionally dated to 1504–1550, and a leading figure in Benin's Idah War against the Igala, traditionally dated 1515–1516 (ICOGANA). Some historians date both later: Kathy Curnow places Esigie's reign at 1517–1566 and the main Idah campaign at about 1519–1521 (Wikipedia, "Esigie", citing Curnow). She backed her son in a succession war, and Esigie rewarded her with a new title, Iyoba (queen mother), making her the first to hold it. The Metropolitan Museum of Art says its ivory mask of her was probably made in the early 16th century for Esigie to honour her (Africa Unwritten, September 2026). British forces took her masks and bronze heads from the royal palace in 1897. In 1977 Nigeria used a replica mask, carved by Erhabor Emokpae, as the emblem of FESTAC '77 in Lagos. In December 2010 Sotheby's announced that one of the originals would be sold in February 2011 at an estimate of £3.5 million to £4.5 million, and the sale was cancelled four days after it was announced (The Art Newspaper, 1 February 2011).

4. Njinga (Ndongo and Matamba, modern Angola)

Ruled from 1624 until her death on 17 December 1663, and at her peak in the 1640s governed almost a quarter of modern northern Angola (Heywood, Harvard University Press, 2017; EBSCO). In 1622 she led her brother's delegation to the Portuguese governor in Luanda. When he gave her no chair, she sat on the back of a kneeling attendant to speak to him at eye level (Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation). She fought the Portuguese for decades, allied with the Dutch and Imbangala war bands, and also traded in enslaved people, a fact Heywood states plainly. European writers later turned her into a monster: the Marquis de Sade called her the cruellest of women, and 20th-century Portugal presented her as a "black savage" (Literary Review, 2017). Heywood's 2017 book was the first full-length study of her in English.

5. Mmanthatisi (Batlokwa, modern South Africa and Lesotho)

Regent of the Batlokwa for her son Sekonyela from 1813 until about 1824, through the wars and mass migrations known as the Difaqane or Mfecane (Encyclopaedia Africana). After rival armies drove her people from their land near present-day Harrismith, she kept them together on the move. In about 1823–24 she led an attack on the future Basotho king Moshoeshoe, later called the Battle of the Pots. Europeans named her people "Mantatees" after her, and then used that name for almost any raiding army on the Highveld. For years historians credited her with the late June 1823 battle at Dithakong, near today's Kuruman (sources give dates from 23 to 27 June). Prisoners taken there told the missionary Robert Moffat they belonged to other groups, and scholars now dispute that it was her army (Africa, Cambridge University Press; Hartley, Mfecane Aftermath).

6. Ranavalona I (Merina kingdom, modern Madagascar)

Ruled for 33 years, from 1828 to 1861, and her forces repelled a joint French and British naval attack on Tamatave on 15 June 1845 (Britannica; UK National Archives). Two French warships and one British warship shelled the port's fort and landed a storming party. The party was forced back to the ships, and HMS Conway's log records 21 killed and 53 wounded across the combined force (UK National Archives). Her reign was also brutal at home. She banned Christianity and persecuted Malagasy converts (Britannica), and she relied heavily on forced labour and the tangena poison ordeal to judge the accused. Historian Gwyn Campbell links the near-absence of population growth in 19th-century Madagascar to the Merina state's policies (Journal of African History, 1991). She belongs on this list because later writers reduced her to a cartoon villain: a 2005 biography was titled Female Caligula (Kirkus Reviews, 2005). The honest record holds both her defence of Madagascar's independence and her cruelty.

7. Ndaté Yalla Mbodj (Waalo, modern Senegal)

Crowned lingeer (queen) of Waalo at Nder on 1 October 1846, she ruled until French forces defeated her army on 25 February 1855 (SenePlus, 2023). Her name appears on official agreements between Waalo and France from 1846, which shows she held real state power. According to SenePlus, in January 1855 she wrote to French governor Louis Faidherbe ordering him to leave the outskirts of Saint-Louis. Faidherbe marched on Nder with a column that sources put at between about 850 and 1,100 men, and his artillery broke the combined army of Waalo and its Trarza allies (SenePlus, 2023; Ndarinfo). Waalo was the first kingdom to fall in France's conquest of Senegal. Her son Sidya was taken by the French, baptised, and sent to school in Algiers. A statue of her stands in Dagana, Senegal, but she is little known outside the country.

8. Taytu Betul (Ethiopian Empire, modern Ethiopia)

Empress from 1889 until she was forced out of power in 1910, she pushed Emperor Menelik II to reject Italy's claim to a protectorate over Ethiopia (Kentake Page, 2026). In the 1889 Treaty of Wuchale, Article 17 made Ethiopia an Italian protectorate in the Italian text but not in the Amharic one. In January 1896, Ethiopian forces took the Italian fort at Mekelle after cutting off its water, a strategy credited to Taytu (History.com, 2025). She marched about 600 miles north with the army. On 1 March 1896, about 100,000 Ethiopian troops defeated about 20,000 Italian-led troops at Adwa (South African History Online, 2024). The Ethiopians took about 3,000 of those fighting for Italy prisoner (History.com, 2025; Britannica). In 1910, as Menelik lay ill, nobles who resented her power removed her, and she died in 1918 largely sidelined. Adwa is still remembered mainly as Menelik's victory.

9. Yaa Asantewaa (Asante, modern Ghana)

Queen mother of Ejisu, she led the Asante war against Britain that began on 28 March 1900, when she was about 60 (BlackPast, 2025). The war began after the British governor, Frederick Hodgson, demanded the Golden Stool, the sacred symbol of the Asante nation, so that he could sit on it. Her forces besieged the British fort at Kumasi. The fighting killed about 1,000 British and allied soldiers and about 2,000 Asante (BlackPast, 2025). Britain won and exiled her to the Seychelles, where she died on 17 October 1921 (Oriire, 2024). The Golden Stool was never captured. A museum opened in her honour on 3 August 2000, and a fire on 23 July 2004 destroyed her sandals and battle dress (GhanaWeb).

10. Muhumusa (Nyabingi movement, modern Uganda and Rwanda)

A royal widow and priestess of the Nyabingi spirit, she led armed resistance against the Rwandan court, German forces and the British until her arrest in September 1911; sources give the date as 28 or 29 September (Wikipedia, citing historian Alison Des Forges; Ghosts of Kanungu, 2009). She claimed to be a widow of Rwanda's King Kigeri IV Rwabugiri, and she rejected the rival court of his successor Musinga. In 1911 she rallied fighters in Kigezi, in south-western Uganda, telling them that European bullets would turn to water. After her capture, she was held under house arrest in Kampala until she died in 1944 or 1945 (Makerere University). Colonial officials treated her as a witch rather than a political leader, and her movement was suppressed. The Rastafari "Nyabinghi" tradition takes its name from the movement she led.

Quick Answers to Commonly Asked Questions About this Topic

Which African queen defeated the Roman Empire?

Amanirenas of Kush. Her forces attacked Roman Egypt in 25 or 24 BC, and after several years of fighting, her envoys won a treaty from Augustus at Samos in 21 or 20 BC. According to Strabo, the emperor granted their demands and cancelled the tribute Rome had imposed. Peace between Kush and Rome then lasted about three centuries.

Which queen on this list ruled the longest?

Njinga, for about 39 years, from 1624 until she died in 1663. Ranavalona I of Madagascar is second, with 33 years from 1828 to 1861.

Why is Ranavalona I on a list of queens history tried to erase?

Because her record was flattened rather than forgotten. She defended Madagascar's independence and repelled a French and British attack in 1845. She also persecuted Christians and ruled harshly through forced labour and poison ordeals. Popular Western accounts kept only the cruelty and turned her into a "mad queen". This list states both sides.

Was Queen Amina of Zazzau real, and why is she not on this list

Possibly, but the evidence is thin. The main written accounts of her come centuries after the time she is said to have lived, so her dates and deeds cannot be confirmed to the standard this list uses. Moremi of Ife and Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, were left out for the same reason.

Did the British ever capture the Golden Stool?

No. Governor Frederick Hodgson demanded it in March 1900, and the demand set off the Yaa Asantewaa War. Britain won the war and annexed Asante, but the stool stayed hidden and was never taken.

Key Sources

Other sources are named in brackets in the text. All pages pulled September 30, 2026.

• Strabo, Geography, Book 17, 1.54 (early 1st century AD), translated edition on LacusCurtius. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/17A3*.html
• Linda M. Heywood, Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen (Harvard University Press, 2017), abstract. https://gwonline.unc.edu/node/7631
• UK National Archives blog, "Battle of Madagascar 1845". https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/battle-madagascar-1845
• History.com, "How Ethiopia Beat Back Colonizers in the Battle of Adwa" (2025). https://www.history.com/articles/battle-adwa-ethiopia-africa-colonization