Sultana (title) Sultana (title) Sultana or sultanah (; ") is a female royal title, and a feminine form of the word sultan. This term has been officially used for female monarchs in some Islamic states, and historically it was also used for sultan's consorts. Nevertheless, westerners have also used the title to refer to Muslim women monarchs and sultan's women relatives who do not hold this title officially. The term sultana is a feminine form of the word sultan (), an Arabic abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", derived from the verbal noun ", meaning "authority" or "power". Later, sultan came to
Arabic arisen in the post-classical era, especially in modern times. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages, mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese, Galician, and Catalan, owing to both the proximity of Christian European and Muslim Arab civilizations and 800 years of Arabic culture and language in the Iberian Peninsula, referred to in Arabic as ". Sicilian has about 500 Arabic words as