Layla al-Akhyaliyya

She is Layla, daughter of al-Akhyal, of 'Uqayl ibn Ka'b, and she is the greatest poetess among women: none is ranked above her but al-Khansa (1). In Fawat al-Wafayat it says: "The famous poetess — she was among the most celebrated of women; none is set before her but al-Khansa. She died in the eighties of the Hijra" (2). As for Zahr al-Adab of al-Husri, in his discussion of al-Khansa he says that she (that is, al-Khansa) is the greatest poetess of the Arabs in the view of many transmitters — but al-Asma'i used to give first place to Layla al-Akhyaliyya. Abu Zayd said: Layla is more versatile, more copious in flow, and stronger in diction, while al-Khansa goes further in elegy. Al-Mubarrad said: "Al-Khansa and Layla, in their poetry, stood ahead of most of the master poets" (3). Al-Jahiz said: "She was among the most eloquent of the poetesses and masters of style" (4). The sources agree that she was eloquent and among the foremost in poetry, and that Tawba ibn al-Humayyir was in love with her. Among his charming verses on Layla is his saying:

If Layla al-Akhyaliyya gave me greeting
while over me lay earth and slabs of stone,
I would return her greeting with gladness — or a screech-owl
would cry out to her from beside the grave;
and were Layla in the sky, my eyes,
gazing hard, would climb up to Layla.

He was killed in one of the raids, and she grieved for him bitterly and composed many elegies on him; they are the noblest and most abundant part of her poetry. She met and was received by several caliphs and emirs of the Umayyads, whom she praised and whose bounties she won — such as Mu'awiya, Marwan ibn al-Hakam, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, and Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan.

She won fame in most of the arts of poetry, especially in panegyric, satire, and elegy, as you will see; and she has many poems — there is no room to cite them here — that deserve to be gathered into a diwan of their own.

It says in Zahr al-Adab: among the fine poetry of al-Akhyaliyya, elegizing Tawba ibn Humayyir al-Khafaji — he loved her, and composed much verse on her:

I looked out — a spur of the mountain between us —
and what a gazer's gaze it was;
and I descried horses gleaming by the tents,
their forerunners like sandgrouse in steady file.
If the slain be fair requital, then you —
may God not send you far away, O Tawba! —
to meet the fates in mail is to meet them bareheaded;
the fates came upon him amid a stout coat of mail,
a tawny lance of Khatt, and a sleek lean mare.
It is as though Tawba, foremost of the young men, never made kneel
she-camels that paw the pebbles with their chests,
and never one day failed the defense and the hopes,
while war flings out its fire in sparks (5).

It is a long poem, reaching fifty verses, and she has dozens of qasidas elegizing him.

Her Visits to al-Hajjaj

Layla used to come before al-Hajjaj, praise him, and win his prizes, and it appears that al-Hajjaj liked to banter with her. She came before him one day and he said to her: "Your youth has passed and your affair has withered away; I adjure you to tell me the truth — was there ever anything suspect between you two?" (that is, between her and Tawba). She said: "No, by God, O Emir — except that one night, when we were alone, he said a word to me by which I thought he had yielded somewhat to the matter, so I said to him:

Many a man with a longing — we said to him: breathe no word of it,
for to that, so long as I live, there is no way;
we have a companion whom we would never wish to betray,
and you, to another woman, are suitor and friend.

And no, by God, I never heard anything suspect from him after that, until we were parted."

It is related of Muhammad ibn al-Hajjaj [ibn] Yusuf that he said: While I was with the Emir, leave was asked for Layla to enter, and he granted it; and there came in a tall woman, with great dark eyes and a beautiful mouth. She greeted him, and al-Hajjaj welcomed her and said, "What news do you bring? — Boy, set a cushion for her!" She sat down, and he said to her: "What has brought you to us?" She said: "To greet the Emir, to render him his due, and to seek his favor." He said to her: "How did you leave your people?" She said: "In plenty and in safety..." Then she said: "Shall I not recite to you, O Emir?" He said: "If you wish." She said:

O Hajjaj, may your weapon never fail —
the fates are in the hand of God, wherever He decrees them;
when al-Hajjaj descends upon an ailing land
he searches out its deepest disease and cures it;
he cures it of the desperate malady within it —
a young man who, when he brandishes the lance, takes it captive —

— and so on to the end of the verses.

He ordered his steward to give her five hundred dirhams and to clothe her in five garments. In another account, she came before him and he said to her, "Recite me some of your poetry on Tawba," and she recited to him:

(1) Ibn Qutayba, al-Shi'r wa-l-Shu'ara' (Poetry and Poets), page 271. (2) Fawat al-Wafayat, page 175. (3) Al-Husri, Zahr al-Adab, part four, page 69. (4) Al-Jahiz, al-Bayan wa-l-Tabyin, part 1, p. 196. (5) Al-Husri, Zahr al-Adab, p. 72, vol. 4.

Steadfast I mourn Tawba, perished,
most worthy of grief of all on whom fortune's wheels have turned.

By your life, death is no disgrace to a young man
if no shames befell him in his life;
no living man, though he live unscathed,
is longer-lasting than those whom the graves have hidden;
and whoever trembles at what Time brings to pass
must one day be seen bearing it with patience.

No living creature has any escape from death,
nor does anything remain beyond the days and Time;

nor can the living reproach what Time brings on,
nor, if the living will not endure, can death raise up the dead.

Every youth, everything new, comes at last to decay,
and every man one day journeys home to God.

I cannot help but weep for you, so long as a dove
calls upon a branch, or a bird takes flight (1).

These verses show her wise reflections upon death.

We likewise find the same episode mentioned in al-Aghani. As for al-Husri, after relating the story of her coming before al-Hajjaj and her reciting to him the qasida already cited ("O Hajjaj, God has given you the utmost...") —

and when we come to its end, al-Hajjaj says to those with him: "Do you know who this is?" They said: "We do not know her; but never have we seen a woman freer of tongue, or fairer of face, or finer of speech," etc. Then she recites to him ("O Hajjaj," etc.); then he asks her to recite to him some of her own poetry, and she recites the qasida already cited ("By your life, death is no disgrace to a young man"). Then al-Hajjaj said to a companion of his: "Go, cut off her tongue!" — and the man called for the cupper to cut off her tongue. She said to him: "Woe to you! The Emir only told you to cut off my tongue with a bounty! Go back to him and ask him." He asked him, and al-Hajjaj flared up in fury and was on the point of cutting off the man's tongue. She said: "O Emir, my organ of speech was nearly cut off!" — and she recited to him:

Hajjaj, you are he above whom stands no one
save the Caliphate and the Eternal One besought for pardon;
Hajjaj, you are the terror of war when it is blown to flame,
and for the people a light held out through the dark (2).

She came in before al-Hajjaj, and when he saw her he bowed his head, until she thought his chin had touched the ground... Al-Hajjaj asked her about her lineage, and she traced it for him. He said to her: "O Layla, what has brought you?" [She said:] "The failing of the stars, the scarcity of clouds, the bite of the cold, and the severity of hardship — and you, after God, were our abundance..." He said to her: "Describe the open country to me." She said: "The highways are a graveyard, and the land lies desolate," etc. Then she said: "I have said something concerning the Emir." He said: "Out with it." And she began to recite ("O Hajjaj, may your weapon never fail, for the fates..." etc.). Her story with him is a long one — there is no room to relate it here — and all of it shows her standing with him, her poetic gift, the abundance of her verse, and the gifts she used to receive from him.

At last he said to her: "Have you any need besides?" She said: "That al-Nabigha al-Ja'di be handed over to me." He said: "It is done" — for he had lampooned her and she him. Word of this reached al-Nabigha, and he fled, seeking refuge with Abd al-Malik; she pursued him to Syria; he fled to Qutayba ibn Muslim in Khurasan; she followed him by the post, bearing al-Hajjaj's letter to Qutayba — and she died at Qumis.

Layla al-Akhyaliyya before Mu'awiya

While Mu'awiya was on the road he saw a rider, and he said to one of his guards: "Bring him to me — and see that you do not frighten him." The guard came to him and said: "Answer the Commander of the Faithful." He said, "It is he I wanted!" And when the rider drew near and let down the face-veil — behold, it was Layla al-Akhyaliyya. She began to recite:

Mu'awiya, scarcely had I set out to you,
the mounts bearing my saddle headlong toward your court,
crossing the earth toward you without slackening
whenever the mirage gleamed like camel-saddles;
you were the refuge, and in you the land took shelter,
that you might revive it when the clouds turned miserly.

He said to her: "What is your need? Does one such as I have a need asked of him by one such as you? Choose, then, yourself!" So he gave to her; and then he said: "Tell me of Mudar!" She said: "Boast with Mudar, make war with Qays, count numbers with Tamim, and hold debate with Asad." He said: "Woe to you, Layla — what do people say Tawba was?" Then she describes him beautifully in rhymed prose — and recites some verses about him — whereupon Mu'awiya says: "Woe to you, Layla; it is claimed that he was a profligate." And she said on the instant, extempore — I do not vouch for the soundness of this account:

God forbid! Tawba was, by God,
open-handed through every strait, abundant in his free gifts,
a bright-faced man of Khafaja who counted stinginess a stain,
his fingers streaming like the water of the dew;
chaste, his lance-shaft firm when trouble strained it,
fair his countenance, few his treacheries;
whoever was his neighbor slept with a contented eye,
and his guest and his lodgers woke to the best of mornings.

So he ordered a prize for her. Then he asks her about the finest thing she had said of him, and she says: I did well where I say:

May God reward with good — and reward is in His hand —
a young man of 'Uqayl who was lord without effort,
a young man to whom this whole world weighed
as nothing — yet he never left off ample deeds.

She came before Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan when she had grown old, and he said to her: "What did Tawba see in you, when he loved you?" [She answered:] "What the people saw in you, when they set you over them!" And Abd al-Malik laughed until a black tooth he used to conceal came into view (3). Al-Husri relates the very same episode. (4)

The Exchange of Lampoons between Layla al-Akhyaliyya and al-Nabigha al-Ja'di

Al-Isfahani relates how he lampooned her, and how she then lampooned him and overturned him.

Then her words spread among the Banu Ja'da, and their people gathered and said: "By God, you shall go to the governor of Medina" — or to the Commander of the Faithful — "that he may take our right from this vile woman, for she has reviled our honor and slandered us." So they made ready for it; and while they were preparing to lodge their complaint against her, she said:

Tidings have come to me that a clan
at Shawran are urging on the docile mounts (5).

And it says in al-Shi'r wa-l-Shu'ara' that she lampooned al-Nabigha al-Ja'di; among the verses with which he lampooned her was his saying, "Come, greet Layla," etc. She answered him and outdid him:

O Nabigha, you never sprang forth, nor were you anything at the first;
you were but a trickle between two crags, unknown (6).

She also has panegyric on the family of Mutarrif.

She elegized Uthman ibn Affan, saying:

After Uthman, shall his nation hope for good?
He was the safest man that ever walked upon a leg;
God's Caliph — he gave to them and endowed them
with what there was of abundant gold and silver;
so give not the lie to God's promise, nor suspect it,
and lean upon nothing out of misgiving.

She died at Qumis, on the side of the Euphrates.

From the foregoing we see that Layla was no less famous than the rest of the celebrated poets. She differs from the other women who will be mentioned in that she tried every art of poetry, writing abundantly and writing well; she moved from one caliph to another like the rest of the well-known poets, praised them, and won their prizes; and the tribes took serious account of her satire, etc.

(1) Fawat al-Wafayat, part 15, pp. 175–176. (2) Al-Husri, Zahr al-Adab, page 76. (3) Al-Husri, Zahr al-Adab, vol. 2, pp. 73–74. (4) Ibn Qutayba, al-Shi'r wa-l-Shu'ara', p. 272; al-Husri, Zahr al-Adab, p. 80. (5) Al-Husri, Zahr al-Adab, vol. 2, p. 75. (6) Al-Aghani, part five, pp. 17–18. (7) Ibn Qutayba, al-Shi'r wa-l-Shu'ara', p. 271.