Fadl al-Qaysi or Faá¸Âl al-ShÃÂûirah (; "Faá¸Âl the Poet"; d. 871) was one of "three early ûAbbasid singing girls, particularly famous for their poetry" and is one of the pre-eminent medieval Arabic female poets whose work survives. She was a concubine of caliph Al-Mutawakkil.
Born in al-Yamama (now in Saudi Arabia), Fadl was brought up in Abbasid Basra (now in Iraq). She was a muwallada (of mixed ancestry) raised among the Abd al-Qays tribe. Although she was legally a slave, she claimed to be a freeborn daughter of the tribe and that her brothers had sold her into slavery unjustly; however, she was sold to Muhammad ibn al-Faraj al-Rukhkhaji, a leading officer of the Caliphate, who later gave her to Caliph al-Mutawakkil (r. 847âÂÂ861).
Fadl became a prominent figure in the court. According to Ibn Annadim, a bibliographer (died 1047), Fadl's diwan extended to twenty pages. Her pupils included the singer Faridah. When Fadl was brought to before al-Mutawakkil the very day she had been given to him, al-Mutawakkil asked her, "Are you really a poet"? She replied: Those who buy and sell me all say so. He laughed and said "Recite some of your poetry to us" and she recited following verses:
Abu al-Ayna said that the Caliph liked the poem and gave her fifty thousand dirhams.
She was described as "dark-skinned, cultured, eloquent, and could think on her feet. Poetry came naturally to her, and she was better at it than all the other women of her time".
She died in 870/71.
An example of Fadl's work, in the translation of Abdullah al-Udhari, is: