Rokeya married at the age of 16, in 1898 to 38-year-old Khan Bahadur Sakhawat Hossain. He was an
Urdu-speaking deputy magistrate of
Bhagalpur (a present-day district of
Bihar state). He earned his
bachelor of agriculture degree from England and was a member of
Royal Agricultural Society of England. He married Rokeya after the death of his first wife. As a liberal, he encouraged Rokeya to continue learning Bengali and English. He also encouraged her to write, and on his advice, she adopted Bengali as the principal language for her literary works. Rokeya wrote ''
Sultana's Dream (1908) before her husband died in 1909. In Sultana's Dream'', Rokeya wrote reversing the roles of men and women in which women were the dominant sex and the men were subordinate and confined to the mardana (the male equivalent of the zenana). She also depicts an alternative, feminist vision of science, in which inventions such as
solar ovens,
flying cars, and
cloud condensers are used to benefit the whole of society. It is regarded as a notable and influential satire. She wrote regularly for the
Saogat,
Mahammadi,
Nabaprabha,
Mahila,
Bharatmahila,
Al-Eslam,
Nawroz,
Mahe Nao,
Bangiya Musalman Sahitya Patrika,
The Mussalman,
Indian Ladies Magazine and others. It started in Bhagalpur, a traditionally Urdu-speaking area, with five students. A dispute with her husband's family over property forced her to move the school in 1911 to
Calcutta, a Bengali-speaking area. == Novels written by Begum Rokeya ==