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The Medieval Period
See also: Medieval Arabic female poets
In the estimation of Tahera Qutbuddin,the citation of women’s poetry in the general medieval anthologies is sparse. The earliest anthologists either ignored women poets or made disparaging remarks about them … In his introduction to the Nuzhat al-Julasa, al-Suyuti refers to a large (at least six-volume) anthology–now lost–of ‘ancient’ women’s poetry … It would seem from this that women poets may have formed a more dynamic part of the poetic landscape, at least in the earliest classical period, than is generally believed.
(The main modern anthology of medieval Arabic women’s writing in English translation is that of Abdullah al-Udhari.)
Pre-Islamic women’s literature seems to have been limited to the genre of marathiya (‘elegy’). The earliest poetesses were al-Khansa and Layla al-Akhyaliyyah of the 7th century. Their concentration on the ritha’ or elegy suggests that this was a form deemed acceptable for women to work with. However, the love lyric was also an important genre of women’s poetry. The Umayyad and ‘Abbasid periods saw professional singing slave girls (qiyan, sing. quayna) who sang love songs and accompanied these with music; alongside panegyric and competitive verse-capping, qiyan also sang love-poetry (ghazal). In his Risalat al-Qiyan (Epistle of the Singing-Girls), al-Jahiz (d. 255/868×69) reckoned that an accomplished singer might have a repertoire of 4,000 songs. Pre-eminent ‘Abbasid singing-girls included: ‘Inan (paramour of Harun al-Rashid, r. 786–809); Arib al-Ma’muniyya (concubine of Al-Ma’mun, r. 813–17); and Fadl Ashsha’ira (d. 871; concubine of Al-Mutawakkil, r. 847–61). Meanwhile, Harun al-Rashid’s half-sister ‘Ulayya bint al-Mahdī (777-825) was also known for her poetic skills, as was the mystic and poet of Basra Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya (d. 801). Women also had an important role in pre-modern periods as patrons of the arts.
Writings from medieval moorish Spain attest to several important female writers, pre-eminently Wallada bint al-Mustakfi (1001–1091), an Umawi princess of al-Andulus, who wrote Sufi poetry and was the lover of fellow poet ibn Zaydun; the Granadan poet Hafsa Bint al-Hajj al-Rukuniyya (d. 1190/91); and Nazhun al-Garnatiya bint al-Qulai’iya (d. 1100). These and other women writers suggest a hidden world of literature by women.
Despite their lack of prominence among the literary elite, women still played an important part as characters in Arabic literature. Sirat al-amirah Dhat al-Himmah, for example, is an Arabic epic with a female warrior, Fatima Dhat al-Himma, as protagonist, and Scheherazade is famous for cunningly telling stories in the One Thousand and One Nights to save her life.
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The Mamluk period saw the flourishing of the Sufi master and poet ‘A’isha al-Ba’uniyya (d. 1517), who was probably the Arabic-speaking world’s most prolific female author before the twentieth century. Living in what is now Egypt and Syria, she came from the al-Ba’uni family, noted for its judges and scholars, and belonged to the ‘Urmawi branch of the Qadiriyya order. ‘A’isha composed at least twelve books in prose and verse, which included over three hundred long mystical and religious poems.
