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Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

Growing up in Somalia, a country where stories are handed down through generations,

one of the first tales that children are told is about an ancient queen who fought to give women power,

including by, and really, there's no easy way to put this.

Well, by castrating men.

Her name was Queen Erewello.

It is one of those few stories in Somali culture, especially an oral sort of storytelling

that focus on women who were very powerful in their own different ways,

but who were also really dominating men.

And that in a way fascinates people.

That's Elie Jamil Ahmed at Queen's College in New York.

I'm a professor of comparative literature,

and I teach African literature, European literature, American

literature, and Asian literature. I have sort of really become jack of all trades and master

of none. But he is obsessed by one particular story, the story of Erewello from way, way back

in 15 AD, which he learned as a boy growing up in Mogadishu,

Somalia's capital city. From the very beginning, they will talk about a queen who was very powerful,

who really defied the patriarchy. The story begins with the town's council of elders,

all men, who sat all day under a nice, shady

tree. Women were not welcome. She would say, why should I really be relegated to doing housework?

...