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Medieval Arabic female poets

In the surviving historical record, medieval Arabic female poets are few compared with the number of known male Arabic-language poets. Within Arabic literature, there has been "an almost total eclipse of women's poetic expression in the literary record as maintained in Arabic culture from the pre-Islamic era through the nineteenth century". However, there is evidence that, compared with the medieval poetry of Europe, women's poetry in the medieval Islamic world was "unparalleled" in "visibility and impact". Accordingly, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, scholars have emphasised that women's contribution to Arabic literature requires greater scholarly attention.

Attestation

The work of medieval Arabic-language women poets has not been preserved as extensively as that of men, but a substantial corpus nonetheless survives; the earliest extensive anthology is the late ninth-century CE Balāghāt al-nisāʾ by Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr (d. 280/893). Abd al-Amīr Muhannā named over four hundred female poets in his anthology. That much literature by women was once collected in writing but has since been lost is suggested particularly by the fact that al-Suyuti's 15th-century Nuzhat al-julasāʼ fī ashʻār al-nisāʼ mentions a large (six-volume or longer) anthology called Akhbar al-Nisa' al-Shau‘a'ir containing "ancient" women’s poetry, assembled by one Ibn al-Tarrah (d. 720/1320). However, a range of medieval anthologies do contain women's poetry, including collections by Al-Jahiz, Abu Tammam, Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, and Ibn Bassam, alongside historians quoting women's poetry such as Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Yaqut al-Hamawi, and Ibn 'Asakir.

Medieval women's poetry in Arabic tends to be in two genres: the rithā’ (elegy) and ghazal (love-song), alongside a smaller body of Sufi poems and short pieces in the low-status rajaz metre. One significant corpus comprises poems by qiyan, women who were slaves highly trained in the arts of entertainment, often educated in the cities of Basra, Ta’if, and Medina. Women's poetry is particularly well attested from Al-Andalus.

According to Samer M. Ali, <blockquote>In retrospect we can discern four overlapping persona types for poetesses in the Middle Ages: the grieving mother/sister/daughter (al-Khansāʾ, al-Khirniq bint Badr, and al-Fāriʿah bint Shaddād), the warrior-diplomat (al-Hujayjah), the princess (al-Ḥurqah, ʿUlayyah bint al-Mahdī, and Walladah bint al-Mustakfī), and the courtesan-ascetic (ʿArīb, Shāriyah, and Rābiʿah al-ʿAdawīyah). Rābiʿah’s biography in particular projects a paradoxical persona that embodies the complementary opposites of sexuality and saintliness.</blockquote>

While most Arabic-speaking medieval woman poets were Muslim, of the three probable medieval female Jewish poets whose work has survived, two composed in Arabic: Qasmūna bint Ismāʿil and the sixth-century Sarah of Yemen (the remaining, Hebrew language poet being the anonymous wife of Dunash ben Labrat).

Known female poets

The following list of known women poets is based on (but not limited to) Abdullah al-Udhari's Classical Poems by Arab Women. It is not complete.

Jahilayya (4000 BCE–622 CE)

Muhammad Period (622–661 CE)

Umayyad Period (661–750 CE)

Abbasid Period (750–1258 CE)

Andalus Period (711–1492 CE)

Anthologies and studies

Anthologies

  • Classical Poems by Arab Women: A Bilingual Anthology, ed. and trans. by Abdullah al-Udhari (London: Saqi Books, 1999), [includes facing Arabic texts and English translations]
  • DÄ«wān de las poetisas de al-Andalus, ed. by Teresa Garulo (Madrid 1986)
  • Poesía femenina hispanoárabe, ed. and trans. by María Jesús Rubiera Mata (Madrid 1990)
  • Nisāʾ min al-Andalus, ed. by Aḥmad KhalÄ«l JumÊ»ah (Damascus: al-Yamāmah lil-Ṭibāʻah wa-al-Nashr wa-al-TawzÄ«Ê», 2001) [نسـاء من الأندلس, أحمد خليل جمعة].
  • Rubiera Máta, María Jesús, Poesía feminina hispanoárabe (Madrid: Castalia, 1989)
  • We Wrote in Symbols: Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers, ed. by Selma Dabbagh (London: Saqi Books, 2021),
  • Ibn al-Sāʿī, Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad, ed. and trans. by Shawkat M. Toorawa, Library of Arabic Literature (New York: New York University Press, 2017), , Arabic text

Studies

  • Hammond, Marlé, Beyond Elegy: Classical Arabic Women's Poetry in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010),
  • Myrne, Pernilla, Female Sexuality in the Early Medieval Islamic World: Gender and Sex in Arabic Literature, The Early and Medieval Islamic World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2020)

References