Women Poets of the Arabs: Aisha bint Talha, al-Thurayya, Humayda bint al-Nu'man, Hamda al-Jumahiyya, Maysun

She is Aisha bint Talha ibn Abdallah — her mother was Umm Kulthum bint Abi Bakr — and she was of all women the one who most resembled her aunt Aisha, wife of the Prophet. She was among the most beautiful of God's creation, and yet, such was the firmness of her character and her confidence in herself, she would not veil her face from anyone. Her husband Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr (who married her after the death of her first husband, just as he also married Sukayna) reproached her for it, and she said:

"God Most High has marked me with the stamp of beauty, and I wished that people should see it and know His favor upon them; I was not one to conceal it. By God, there is no blemish in me that anyone could reproach me with." This Aisha was famed for boldness, steadiness of nerve, and breadth of learning. Like Sukayna bint al-Husayn, she would sit with men and discuss with them literature, poetry, and the other branches of knowledge; she would attend the archers' competitions and contend among them; and she possessed an awesome presence and authority, and many stories are told of her.

"Aisha — like Sukayna — held a position of the first rank; she and her companion Sukayna preserved the standing of the Arab woman in that age, and the two of them raised her station and her reach." Whoever consults the Aghani and the other ancient texts will be left in no doubt of it.

She likewise resembled Sukayna in her passion for poetry, her forwardness, and her transmission of verse without concern for composing it. In most of the well-known sources I have found no lines attributed to her except the following: when Yahya ibn Sa'id came asking for Aisha's hand on behalf of his brother Yahya, she said to him, write to your brother:

You have settled where the lizard settles: you are not lean for the chase,
nor is any watering-pool of use where you are.

It is related in the Aghani: Abu Amr said, this ode was recited before Aisha bint Talha ibn Ubaydallah (that is, the ode of Qays ibn al-Hadadiyya whose opening is "Is it so — that because Nu'm has gone far, you despair?"), and she admired it; and in her presence was a company of poets, and she said: "Whichever of you can add to it a single verse that resembles it and enters into its meaning shall have this robe of mine." And not one of them was able to do it.

Her admiration for the poetry of Ibn Abi Rabi'a, and her knowledge of it by heart

Muhammad ibn Sallam related to us: "There passed words between Aisha bint Talha and her husband Umar ibn Abdallah ibn Ma'mar, and she lay awake one night, and said: Ibn Abi Rabi'a knows nothing of this night of mine, where he says:

With one in charge whose hand spares her everything that troubles her,
she does not lie awake at the end of the night over anything."

Al-Isfahani likewise records the account of her meeting with Umar ibn Abi Rabi'a at Mecca, as she rode along on a mule: how he stopped her and asked her to hear what he had said about her, and she stopped, and he recited to her. Then, after she hears the verses and ponders their meanings, she says: "No, by the Lord of this edifice, he never meant me for so much as the glance of an eye..." And Aisha kept humoring him and treating him gently, for fear that he should molest her, until she had completed her pilgrimage and departed for Medina; and on that he said...

She is the daughter of Ali ibn Abdallah ibn al-Harith ibn Umayya the Younger, son of Abd Manaf; and it was she who raised al-Gharid and taught him to wail the elegies over those of her people whom Yazid ibn Mu'awiya slew on the day of al-Harra.

Al-Thurayya was among the women dearest to Umar ibn Abi Rabi'a, so that she became known as "al-Thurayya, Umar's lady"; and she was famed for splendid beauty and lofty station, like Sukayna and Aisha.

I do not suppose anyone is ignorant of these famous verses which Umar ibn Abi Rabi'a spoke about her when he heard of her marriage to Suhayl:

O you who wed al-Thurayya to Suhayl — God keep you, how shall the two ever meet?
She is Syrian when she rises, and Suhayl, when he rises, is of Yemen.

Her forwardness and her understanding of poetry — Al-Thurayya, like other women, took pleasure in Umar's poetry about her:

Ramla bint Abdallah al-Khuza'iyya made the pilgrimage, and Umar said of her:

The heart became hostage to beauty — stricken, the day it parted from the departing riders.

When al-Thurayya heard it she said: "He is an impudent fellow, clever with his tongue; if I am spared I shall surely check his course and make him know himself." And when she reached his words:

I said, Who are you? She turned away and said: must you put your question to all mankind?

she said: "What a persistent asker — shame upon him! And she gave him his answer, fine-drawn though it was." And when she reached his words:

We are of the dwellers of Iraq, and before that we dwelt a while in Mecca,

she said: "The grim creature has tipped him a wink." And when she reached his words:

We answered you truly when you asked — so who are you? Perhaps one affair may draw others in its train,

she said: "The witless woman has thrown at him the last she had, all in one sitting." And she forsook Umar. And when there also reached her his words about Ramla:

Her mantle, drawn back, disclosed the light of a full moon shining for the beholders,

she said: "Fie on him — what a liar! Could any beauty be exalted by his describing her, after Ramla?"

Her correspondence with Umar — When a letter came to her from Umar and the messenger begged her to be reconciled to him... after much insistence he persuaded her to write him a letter of reconciliation, and she did.

In my essay of last year about al-Thurayya, I searched the most important sources that have written of al-Thurayya in the hope of finding poetry attributed to her, but I came upon nothing except the verses recorded in the Aghani, whose authenticity Abu al-Faraj doubts.

It is related in the Aghani that when al-Thurayya was married in Umar's absence, and the news of her marriage and her departure for Egypt reached him, he journeyed to Medina and wrote to her:

I have written to you from my country the letter of one love-crazed, consumed with grief,
melancholy, with streaming eyes, alone with his regrets,
whom the flame of longing keeps sleepless, between breast and liver,
so that he holds his heart with one hand and wipes his eyes with the other.

He wrote it on a fine sheet, adorned it and made it beautiful, and sent it to her. When she read it she wept bitterly, then recited:

My life for him who cannot stand alone — who, if God does not keep him, is lost.

And she wrote to him, saying:

There came to me a letter whose like men never saw, penned in camphor, musk, and ambergris;
its paper of Qus, and its fastening a cord of pure sapphire and gems;
at its head, from me to you a greeting: long has my yearning for you been, and my remembering;
and its address: from one whose heart is enthralled, to one distracted, lovesick, set aflame with sorrow.

Abu al-Faraj said: "This report I hold to be fabricated — its feeble verse shows as much — but I have set it down as it came to me." This testimony of Abu al-Faraj shows that al-Thurayya stood too high for this feeble verse to be ascribed to her, and that had she composed, she would have produced something surpassing these lines in force and in meaning.

In any case, the sources in our hands record nothing of her poetry.

Al-Thurayya before al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik

When Suhayl died, leaving her — or divorced her — she went out to al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik...

He asked her to recite something of Umar's poetry. She said: "May God have mercy on him — he was chaste, and chaste in his verse. I recite his words:

What would it cost the traces at al-Bulayyayn to make plain a returned greeting, or to answer..." etc.

When al-Walid was alone with Umm al-Banin he said to her: "How splendid al-Thurayya is! Do you know what she intended by reciting to me what she recited of Umar's verse?" She said no. He said: "When I alluded to him before her, she alluded to me that my mother was a Bedouin woman."

Whoever peruses the first volume of the Aghani will observe that most of Umar's ladies knew how to read and write; they would read his letters and correspond with him.

Humayda bint al-Nu'man ibn Bashir al-Ansari

The lampooning poetess. She was a woman of standing and rank — her sister was the wife of al-Hajjaj — and al-Hajjaj afterward married Humayda's daughter.

Humayda married and was divorced several times, and she would lampoon her husbands with satire so biting and so coarse that even men would blush to utter it. She had amusing adventures and jests with her husbands. I found a real pleasure in reading some of her verses, for the spirit of wit and the quickness of mind that are in them. She was famed for her love of jesting.

It is hard for the reader to credit all that is told of her and of her relations with her husbands — above all the answering of the prayer of her husband Rawh ibn Zinba'...

And I have observed that even the women of that age did not shrink from uttering outlandish expressions — Layla al-Akhyaliyya likewise did not disdain to use outlandish expressions in her satire — and al-Nabigha felt no shame before her, but would taunt her with verses that bespeak impudence and scant manners — and she in her turn would answer him in kind.

Al-Harith ibn Khalid ibn al-Asi married her — Humayda, that is — in Damascus

When he came before Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, she spoke three verses about him — I refrain from quoting them — and then her words reached Abd al-Malik, who said: Had she not set the old men above the young, I would have punished her.

Her sister Amra

She was the wife of al-Mukhtar; then Mus'ab married her after al-Mukhtar was killed. (Humayda and her sister had many husbands, and all of them were men of note.)

Humayda's marriage to Rawh ibn Zinba', and her verse on him, after her divorce from al-Harith

Rawh ibn Zinba': one day he observed her looking at his tribesmen of Judham, who had gathered at his house, and she said: "And what do I see but Judham? By God, I do not love what is lawful of them — any more than what is unlawful." And she said, lampooning him:

The silk wept because of Rawh and disowned his skin, and the fine mantles cried aloud against Judham;
and the cloaks said: there was a time when I was your clothing — I, and Kurdish wraps, and plush coverlets.

And she said of him, in an exchange between them:

I give you this much praise: that your reach is short, and that your stock is merely pasted onto Judham.

He answers her — then she replies — then she turns to her brother and recites to him several coarse verses, blaming him for marrying her to a man who belongs to Judham.

Then she turns to Rawh and says (there is a jest and a double meaning in it):

You were named Rawh — "ease" — yet you are grief, as all men know: may God grant no ease to Rawh ibn Zinba'!

Rawh answers her; then she replies to him with several verses, all of them lampoon...

Rawh said, in the course of one of their quarrels

Her marriage to Fayd, and her verse on him

in it: "O God, if she lives on after me, afflict her with a husband who will slap her face and fill her lap with vomit." After him she was married by al-Fayd ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hakam ibn Aqil, a handsome young man who was given to drink, and she loved him; and sometimes he would drink himself drunk, and would slap her face and vomit into her lap, and she would say, "God rest Rawh — his prayer has been answered." ... (What a coincidence!!)

And she said to Fayd:

You were named Fayd — "overflow" — yet nothing overflows from you but your filth between the door and the house.
That is the prayer of Rawh the good — well do I know it; may God water his grave with the low-hanging cloud that travels by night.

And she said to Fayd also:

O Fayd, I used to take you for a flood; but I found in you neither flood nor Euphrates.

And she said of him:

Fayd is no overflower of bounty toward us — yet with vomit Fayd overflows for us indeed.

(How astonishing, the way the name Fayd matched the meaning of vomit!!)

Humayda and al-Hajjaj: by al-Fayd she bore a daughter, whom al-Hajjaj married; and before her al-Hajjaj had had Umm Aban bint al-Nu'man ibn Bashir. Humayda addressed to al-Hajjaj a few verses which there is no room to quote.

One day she came to visit her daughter, and al-Hajjaj said to her: "Humayda, once I could bear your jesting; but today I am in Iraq, and they are an evil people — so take care." She said: "I will hold my tongue until I leave."

She once said to her husband Rawh ibn Zinba', who was swarthy and massive: "How can you hold lordship when three traits are in you: you are of Judham, you are a coward, and you are jealous?" He said: "As for Judham, I stand at its very summit... As for cowardice, I have but one soul; had I two, I would give one of them freely. As for jealousy, that is a matter in which I do not care for your hints — and a man is right indeed to be jealous over the foolish, witless woman," etc.

She was the beloved of Abu Dahbal al-Jumahi, the well-known poet, and was of his tribe. He was a fortunate man, one of the nobles of Banu Jumah; as for her, she was a merry woman to whom men would gather for conversation, the recitation of poetry, and the telling of tales, and Abu Dahbal never quit her company, along with all who gathered about her; and she loved him too... And when she was told that he was enamored of another, she wrote to him, reproaching him and telling him what his ill-usage had wrought upon her heart.

She was the wife of Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan and the mother of Yazid. Her spirit grew straitened at what had come upon her, and he said to her: "You are in the midst of a great dominion whose worth you do not know — and before today you were in the woolen cloak." Then she spoke these verses:

A tent in which the winds flutter is dearer to me than a lofty palace;
a young camel plodding after the caravans is dearer to me than a mincing mule;
a dog barking the night-callers away from me is dearer to me than a tame cat;
to wear a cloak of wool, with my eye content, is dearer to me than wearing gauzy stuffs;
to eat a crust in the corner of my tent is dearer to me than eating the soft loaf;
the voices of the winds in every mountain pass are dearer to me than the tapping of tambourines;
and a slender, high-hearted youth of my cousins is dearer to me than a gross and violent brute.
The roughness of my life in the desert is sweeter to my soul than this life of ease;
I seek no substitute for my homeland — and what a noble homeland it is!

I used to repeat these verses when I was only a little girl, and I still thrill to them when I hear them. Maysun's fame rests upon these verses, which have passed from mouth to mouth.