ABSTRACT
This chapter refers women as 'Warriors to the Core' and discusses the American military's adaptation of Karl von Clausewitz to discredit women as warriors and to exclude them from the discourse. In the Arab world and during the seventh century that predates Islam, prominent women like Maoria of Syria engaged in territorial expansion through Palestine, Egypt and Phoenicia. Any account of women warriors of an earlier era would be rendered incomplete without mentioning the contributions of the Amazon women of Dahomey or modern-day Benin. The women soldiers were reputed to be more loyal than male peers to the extent that those who were captured to serve the king's army later remained of their own volition, even though they had the opportunity to return home. Many graves showed women with bowed legs, a reflection of their lifestyle on horseback, whereas other graves contained bent arrowheads, a sign of how the women met their demise in combat.
