Consorts of the Caliphs. Ibn al-Sa'i

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СКАЧАТЬ n. 100 in the main text below. She died in Jumada al-Thani, 599 [February, 1203], according to the sources quoted by Kaḥḥālah in his dictionary of notable women, Aʿlām al-nisāʾ, 2:39. Ibn al-Sāʿī records her death a month earlier, in Rabiʿ al-Thani, and quotes part of a long elegy by a court poet “which I have given in its entirety in Elegies on the Blessed Consort Lady Zumurrud, Mother of the Caliph al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh,” al-Jāmiʿ al-mukhtaṣar, 9:102, 279.

      39 §15.6.

      40 §21.1.

      41 §22.1–2.

      42 §23.3.

      43 See the maps immediately following this introduction.

      44 Zubaydah, the wife of Hārūn al-Rashīd, was famous for provisioning the pilgrim route with wells and resting places.

      45 Under the caliph al-Muqtafī (530–55/1136–60), Abū l-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Jawzī (ca. 511–97/1116–1201), head of two, then five, Baghdad madrasahs, enjoyed an “extraordinary career as a preacher … through his influence on the masses, he was politically important for those caliphs who, in their struggle with the military and the Saljūqs, followed a Ḥanbalī-Sunnī orientation. Diminishing influence under other caliphs was due to different policies adopted by them” (Seidensticker, “Ibn al-Jawzī,” 338). In his history, al-Muntaẓam fī tārīkh al-mulūk wa-l-umam, (The Well-Ordered History of Rulers and Nations) “Ibn al-Jawzī … several times uses the obituary sections of his regnal annals to highlight the virtues of the mothers or consorts of caliphs. It seems likely that this device serves to redeem the reigns of caliphs who are not themselves wholly satisfactory from Ibn al-Jawzī’s viewpoint, and that it is meant to suggest a continuity of virtue in the Abbasid caliphate as a political institution” (Bray, “A Caliph and His Public Relations,” 36). Ibn al-Jawzī records the funerals or burials of notables, especially women, in considerable detail; so too does Ibn al-Sāʿī in Consorts of the Caliphs: see §21.2, §22.3, §23.2, §24.1, §25.2, §27.4, §28.1, §29.2.1, §29.2.2, §29.3, §32.1 and §33.1. One of Ibn al-Sāʿī’s works was devoted to cemeteries and shrines: al-Maqābir al-mashhūrah wa-l-mashāhid al-mazūrah (Famed Tombs and Visited Shrines); it has recently been edited. The work is referred to by Diem and Schöller in The Living and the Dead in Islam, 2:312, but they do not cite Nisāʾ al-khulafāʾ.

      46 Jawād, “Introduction,” 12.

      47 Ibn al-Sāʿī’s sources for the early- to mid-Abbasid consorts include Abū l-ʿAynāʾ, Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī, Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, ʿAlī ibn Yaḥyā the astromancer, Hilāl ibn al-Muḥassin the Sabian, Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Jaʿfar ibn Qudāmah, al-Jahshiyārī, Jaḥẓah, members of the al-Mawṣilī family, al-Ṭabarī, Thābit ibn Sinān, and Thaʿlab; for all of these, see the glossaries.

      48 §3.3.

      49 §6.4.

      50 §13.1, §13.7.

      51 §3.1: ʿInān; §6.5: ʿArīb; §6.7: an anonymous slave; §7.3: Bidʿah; §13.3; §13.5; §13.6; §13.9; §14.2: Faḍl; §15.3; §15.4; §15.5; §15.6: Maḥbūbah; §19.2; §19.3: Nabt.

      52 §3.5; §3.7.

      53 §6.5.

      54 Ibn al-Sāʿī cites Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī as the author of the Book of Songs, but Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī also wrote a book devoted to women slave poets, al-Imāʾ al-shawāʿir, extant and available in two editions, both from 1983, one edited by al-Qaysī and al-Sāmarrāʾī (paginated), the other edited by al-ʿAṭiyyah (numbered). The texts of the two editions are not identical, but of our “consorts,” both have: ʿInān (pages 23–44/no. 1); Faḍl (49–71/no. 3); Haylānah (95–96/no. 14); ʿArīb (99–112/no. 16); Maḥbūbah (117–20/no. 20); Banān/Bunān (121–22/no. 21); Nabt (129–31/no. 25); Bidʿah (139–141/no. 29). These references are given here because al-Imāʾ al-shawāʿir is not among the otherwise comprehensive list of sources cited in Jawād’s footnotes to Jihāt al-aʾimmah. (For a more recent edition of al-Iṣfahānī’s book, titled Riyy al-ẓamā fī-man qāla al-shiʿr fī l-imā, see Primary Sources in the bibliography.)

      55 §13.4; §7.3; §7.4.

      56 According to Ibn al-Sāʿī, Hārūn al-Rashīd married Ghādir (§2.1); we find the identical story in Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, 8: 349, but al-Ṭabarī does not list her among Hārūn’s wives (The ʿAbbāsid Caliphate in Equilibrium, 326–27). Farīdah the Younger is said to have married al-Mutawakkil (§18.3); in the Book of Songs, in the joint entry on Farīdah the Elder and Farīdah the Younger, Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (Kitāb al-Aghānī, 3:183), cites al-Ṣūlī as the authority for this; again, the “marriage” is not mentioned elsewhere. There is a question mark over these stories: the jurists would certainly have disapproved of a free man marrying a slave without first freeing her, but perhaps manumission is implied by the very word “marriage.” Two other such women are said to have married free men: Farīdah the Elder marries twice, again with no mention of manumission (§11.1); and Sarīrah—who had borne her owner a child and thereby gained her freedom when he was killed—marries a Hamdanid prince (§36.1).

      57 In addition to Jawād’s footnotes to Nisāʾ al-khulafāʾ, see Stigelbauer, Die Sängerinnen am Abbasidenhof um die Zeit des Kalifen al-Mutawakkil; and Al-Heitty, The Role of the Poetess at the Abbāsid Court (132–247 A.H./750–861 A.D.).

      58 Kilpatrick, Making the Great Book of Songs.

      59 Imhof, “Traditio vel Aemulatio? The Singing Contest of Sāmarrā.”

      60 Al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/868), Risālat al-Qiyān/The Epistle on Singing-Girls; al-Washshāʾ (d. 325/936), Kitāb al-Muwashshā, also known as al-Ẓarf wa-l-ẓurafāʾ, chapter 20. German and Spanish translations, as well as a partial French one, exist of Kitāb al-Muwashshā: Das Buch des buntbestickten Kleids, ed. Bellmann; El libro del brocado, ed. Garulo; Le livre de brocart, ed. Bouhlal.

      61 Ali, Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam, is an important departure.

      NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION

      62 The other six members of RRAALL are Kristen Brustad, Jamal Elias, Nuha Khoury, Nasser Rabbat, Dwight Reynolds, and Eve Troutt Powell.

      63 Reynolds, ed., Interpreting the Self.

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