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: 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 medieval Europe, women's poetry in the medieval Islamic world was 'unparalleled' in 'visibility and impact'. Accordingly, recent scholars emphasise 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. 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 fifteenth-century Nuzhat al-julasāʼ fī ashʻār al-nisāʼ mentions a large anthology called Akhhar al-Nisa' al-Shau‘a'ir containing 'ancient' women’s poetry, assembled by one Ibn al-Tarrah. 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’ and ghazal, 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,
In retrospect we can discern four overlapping persona types for poetesses in the Middle Ages: the grieving mother/sister/daughter, the warrior-diplomat, the princess, and the courtesan-ascetic. Rābiʿah’s biography in particular projects a paradoxical persona that embodies the complementary opposites of sexuality and saintliness.

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.

Anthologies and studies

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

Jahilayya (4000 BCE–622 CE)