Classical Poems by Arab Women E-Book

• Herausgeber: Saqi Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 71

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

With poems in both English and Arabic, this remarkable anthology presents rarely seen poems by over fifty Arab women spanning over 5000 years from the pre-Islamic to the Andalusian periods.

Leseprobe

CLASSICAL POEMS BY ARAB WOMEN

SAQI BOOKS

Gable House, 18–24 Turnham Green Terrace, London W4 1QP

www.saqibooks.com

First published in 1999 by Saqi Books

This edition published 2024

Copyright © Abdullah al-Udhari, 1999 and 2024

Abdullah al-Udhari has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978 0 86356 934 0

eISBN 978 0 86356 778 0

Printed and bound by Printworks Global Ltd, London/Hong Kong

CONTENTS

Introduction

THE JAHILIYYA (4000 BCE–622 CE)

Mahd al-Aadiyya

I see people

Afira bint Abbad

No one can

What’s become

Laila bint Lukaiz

I wish

Jalila bint Murra

Noble lady

Umama bint Kulaib

You waste your time

Safiyya bint Khalid al-Bahiliyya

We were twinshoots

Juhaifa Addibabiyya

What a man

Umm Khalid Annumairiyya

The morning

Ishraqa al-Muharibiyya

All lovers

Umm Addahak al-Muharibiyya

Rider

The contentment

Anonymous

You don’t satisfy

Khansa

The rising

Time

THE ISLAMIC PERIOD (622–661)

Fatima bint Muhammad

Those who smell the soil

We miss you

The sky turned grey

When you were around

Anonymous

Judge of sensible verdicts

THE UMAYYAD PERIOD (661–750)

Laila bint Sa’d al-Aamiriyya

I have been through

Maisun bint Bahdal

I’d rather be

Laila al-Akhyaliyya

Don’t tell me

Hajjaj

Dahna bint Mas–hal

Lay off

Bint al-Hubab

Why should you beat me

Why are you raving mad

Umm al-Ward al-Ajlaniyya

If you want to know

Anonymous

My little boy’s smell

Anonymous

Why doesn’t Abu Hazm come home

Umaima Addumainiyya

You promised

THE ABBASID PERIOD (750–1258)

Hajna bint Nusaib

Commander of the faithful

Raabi’a al-Adwiyya

I put you in my heart

I love you a double love

Laila bint Tarif

On the hill of Nubatha

Ulayya bint al-Mahdi

Lord, it’s not a crime

I held back

We hint

My love

Dress the water

Love thrives

Lubana bint Ali ibn al-Mahdi

Oh hero

Anonymous

Grave tenant

Inan

If my days

Aasiya al-Baghdadiyya

They said

Zahra al-Kilabiyya

I keep my passion

Aa’isha bint al-Mu’tasim

I read your poem

Fadl Ashsha’ira

Riding beasts

Zabba bint Umair ibn al-Muwarriq

I have been free

Juml

Juml

Umm Ja’far bint Ali

Leave me alone

Arib al-Ma’muniyya

To you

Thawab bint Abdullah al-Hanzaliyya

Your manhood

Salmabint al-Qaratisi

My eyes outshine

Safiyya al-Baghdadiyya

I am the wonder

Taqiyya Umm Ali

There is nothing good

If there was a way

Shamsa al-Mawsiliyya

She sways

THE ANDALUSIAN PERIOD (711–1492)

Hafsa bint Hamdun

I have

Ibn Jamil’s

Aa’isha bint Ahmad al-Qurtubiyya

I am a lioness

Mariam bint Abu Ya’qub Ashshilbi

What is there

Umm al-Kiram bint al-Mu’tasim ibn Sumadih

I would give my life

Come and see

Umm al-Ala bint Yusuf

Listen to me

The dewy reeds

If love and song

Whatever you do

Khadija bint Ahmad ibn Kulthum al-Mu’afiri

They brought us

Qasmuna bint Isma’il ibn Yusuf ibn Annaghrila

I see a garden

Gazelle

Ghassaniyya al-Bajjaniyya

I knew him

Wallada bint al-Mustakfi

By Allah

Come

If you were faithful

Ibn Zaidun, in spite

Ibn Zaidun, though

Is there a way

I’timad Arrumaikiyya

I urge you to come

Muhja bint Attayyani al-Qurtubiyya

I thought your name

Nazhun al-Gharnatiyya

I put you up

Bless those wonderful nights

Amat al-Aziz

Your eyes thrill

Buthaina bint al-Mu’tamid ibn Abbad

Listen to my words

Hind

Noble Lord

Umm al-Hana bint Abdulhaqq ibn Atiyya

My love

Hafsa bint al-Hajj Arrakuniyya

Ask the lightning

I’m jealous

I know too well

The girl with the gazelle neck

If you were not a star

I send my earthrilling poems

When we walked

Shall I call

I send salaams

They killed my love

Ashshilbiyya

It’s time

Aa’isha al-Iskandraniyya

If your heart

Hamda bint Ziyad

My tears

The tongue stingers

Umm Assa’d bint Isam al-Himyari

I will kiss

INTRODUCTION

I

Women’s Poetry

Classical Poems by Arab Women takes a new look at classical Arab poetry and differs from the standard perception of Arab poetry in three ways. Firstly, it pushes back the starting date from 500 CE to 4000 BCE. Secondly, it tells the story of Arab poetry through women’s eyes. Thirdly, it shows sharply focused snaps of the world of men lensed by women.

The standard history of classical Arab poetry begins and ends with a man, with the odd woman thrown in, who is either tearing her eyes out over the dead or tantalizing men’s desire with song and lute. Women poets appear as incidentals and the biographical dictionaries devote minimal space to them, in spite of the fact that their contribution to the growth of the literary tradition is as significant as that of the men.

Women poets have been around since the earliest times, yet their diwans (collected poems) were not given the same attention as the men’s, even though the women poets may have been princesses, noblewomen or saints. Apart from Khansa’s diwan, no other diwans by women have yet appeared. A number of anthologies of women’s poems were edited in the Abbasid and later periods, but only two or three anthologies have been published, though in mutilated form. Contemporary editors, unlike the openminded classical anthologists, some of whom were respected theologians such as Suyuti (1445–1505), assumed the role of society’s moral guardians and abused the integrity of the texts.

II

The Veiling and Walling of Women

Arab society had a relaxed approach to sex. In the Jahiliyya period a woman had complete freedom to marry or go with any man of her choice. Although polygamy was practiced, it was up to the woman to agree to join a polygamous household, and if she was not happy with her husband’s treatment she had the right to divorce him at will. Also, a woman could have as many boyfriends as she liked, and if she bore a child, she was the one who decided whom to name as the father, and the man concerned had to accept his paternal responsibility, even if he was not the biological father. On the other hand, if a brothel woman conceived, it was left to the client to acknowledge the paternity of the child since he had paid for her services. Similarly, the child of a concubine was legitimized only after the master’s paternal acknowledgement.

After the establishment of Islam, the women’s privileges were transferred to the men. The process of women containment was started by the Prophet Muhammad, who invariably invoked Allah for revelationary support to justify his hold on women. His constant recourse to revelationary back up provoked his wife Aa’isha to tease him: ‘Your Lord is always on call to endorse your whims.’ But as women in early Islam were still imbued with the Jahili free spirit, the Prophet could not fully put the stopper on women’s free will.

In Umayyad and Abbasid societies men and women mixed freely in mosques, taverns, markets, streets and their own homes. Lovers met openly in their favourite haunts, and society ladies drew both sexes to their salons. The Prophet’s great–granddaughter Sukaina bint al-Husain (d. 735) and Aa’isha bint Talha (d. 719) vied with each other in attracting to their salons the leading poets, composers, singers, scholars and pleasure seekers of their day. Sukaina and Aa’isha even defied their jealous husbands by refusing to wear the veil, saying Allah had made them beautiful for all to see. The husbands divorced Sukaina and Aa’isha, who married again without having the veil forced upon them.

Umayyad and Abbasid men were not stuck up about their womenfolk’s sexual needs. When Ulayya bint Al–Mahdi expressed her love for some of her slaves and was gossiped about, her brother the Caliph Harun Arrashid (766–809) chastised her for not being discreet about her love affairs and forbade her for a while to mention the names of her slave lovers in her poems. Further, Ulayya’s father, the Caliph Mahdi (744–785), used his wife, Khaizaran, to procure for him the wives of his officials and beneficiaries in order to deprive his followers of their honour and break their will. Mahdi’s husbandbreaking policy is called diyatha, and is still flourishing in the Arab world as a politically effective taming tool.