Medieval Arabic female poets

The work of medieval Arabic-language women poets has not been preserved as extensively as that of men, but a substantial corpus nonetheless survives. Abd al-Amīr Muhannā named over four hundred female poets in his anthology.[4] 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 fifteenth-century Nuzhat al-julasāʼ fī ashʻār al-nisāʼ mentions a large (six-volume or longer) anthology called Akhhar 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.[5]

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.[6] One significant corpus comprises poems by qiyan, women who were slaves highly trained in the arts of entertainment,[7] often educated in the cities of Basra, Ta’if, and Medina.[8] Women's poetry is particularly well attested from Al-Andalus.[9]

According to Samer M. Ali,

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.[10]

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).[11][12]

• 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]
• Dīwān 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 Khalīl Jumʻah (Damascus: al-Yamāmah lil-Ṭibāʻah wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʻ, 2001) [نسـاء من الأندلس, أحمد خليل جمعة].
• Hammond, Marlé, Beyond Elegy: Classical Arabic Women's Poetry in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), ISBN 9780197264720
• 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) ISBN 9781838605018
• Rubiera Máta, María Jesús, Poesía feminina hispanoárabe (Madrid: Castalia, 1989)

The following list of known women poets is based on (but not limited to) Abdullah al-Udhari's Classical Poems by Arab Women.[13] It is not complete.