Sultan to as a sultanate ( "). The term is distinct from king ( "), despite both referring to a sovereign ruler. The use of "sultan" is restricted to Muslim countries, where the title carries religious significance, contrasting the more secular "king", which is used in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries. A feminine form of "sultan", used by Westerners, is Sultana or Sultanah and this title has been used legally for some (not all) Muslim women monarchs and sultan's mothers and chief consorts. However, Turkish and Ottoman Turkish also uses "sultan" for imperial lady, as Turkish grammar—which is influenced by Persian
Arabic literature three hundred long mystical and religious poems. The earliest prominent female Arabic writer of the modern period during which the Arab cultural renaissance (Al-Nahda) took place is Táhirih (1820–52), from what is now Iran. She wrote fine Arabic and Persian poetry. Women's literary salons and societies in the Arab world were also pioneered during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, initially by Christian Arab women, who tended to have more freedom and access to education than their female Muslim counterparts in the Ottoman Empire at the time. Maryana Marrash (1848−1919) started what is now believed to have been the first