The Abbasid Woman

What share had she: of influence, of culture, and of social and political activity??

Woman in the first Abbasid age enjoyed a share of freedom equal to that of the Umayyad woman — she who said in defense of unveiling: "God, blessed and exalted, has marked me with the brand of a beauty which I wished people to see, that they might know His favor toward them; I would not conceal it." And down to the reign of the tenth caliph — the reign of al-Mutawakkil — woman continued to enjoy a wondrous portion of freedom. Chivalry was alive among men. Neither the licentiousness of the Byzantines nor the luxury of the Persians had yet succeeded in demolishing and destroying the simplicity of the desert and its freedom. Fathers, up to that time, took pride in bearing the names of their refined and beautiful daughters as bynames, such as Abu Layla, Abu Hind, and Abu Sufra. Their names were the battle cries of brothers and lovers as they plunged into the fray. The refined Arab woman conversed with men without any perturbation, and received her guests with every welcome, without any shyness; and she was respected by all who were around her.

In the time of al-Mansur we hear of two princesses of the ruling house, cousins of al-Mansur, who went to war wearing coats of iron mail, in fulfillment of a vow they had taken upon themselves at the time of the war with Marwan, the last of the Umayyad caliphs. And al-Khayzuran wielded, in the reign of al-Mahdi, an influence in affairs such as no other woman possessed. In the first days of the caliphate of her son, Musa al-Hadi, she used to act on her own authority in his affairs and to deal with him as she had dealt with his father before him, monopolizing command and prohibition. Zubayda, too, enjoyed an ample share of freedom, and intervened in the affairs of the state; indeed, when she made the pilgrimage to the House of God in the year 186 A.H. and realized the hardships the people of Mecca suffered in obtaining drinking water, she summoned the keeper of her treasury and ordered him to bring engineers and workmen from all parts of the country, saying to him: "Work, though a stroke of the pickaxe should cost a dinar." And so it was: the most capable engineers and workmen came to Mecca, joined together the springs of water in the mountains, and made the water flow beneath the rocks until it reached Mecca.

Al-Rashid loved Zubayda with a great love — so much so that when his brother, the caliph al-Hadi, resolved to depose him from the succession in the year 170 A.H. and to have allegiance sworn to his own son, Ja'far ibn al-Hadi, al-Rashid was content in himself with that. Yahya ibn Khalid al-Barmaki said to him: "Do not do it." Al-Rashid answered him: "Does not my brother leave me a life of ease and wholesomeness, wherein there is room enough for me, and I shall live with my cousin Zubayda?" Zubayda had no rival in this great rank which history records for her, save 'Ulayya, al-Rashid's sister by his father, and al-'Abbasa. The former was among the most distinguished women of her age, possessed of a surpassing musical gift; the latter had a high culture and a rare intelligence, and for this reason she always attended al-Rashid's assembly.

The caliphs delighted in having their women accompany them. The historians relate, from a contemporary of al-Mahdi, who said: "I saw al-Mahdi as he entered Basra by the Quraysh road, and I saw him riding with his daughter al-Banuqa before him, between him and the chief of police; she wore a black tunic, was girt with a sword, and about her was a belt of rashash work, in the guise of the pages." As for Zaynab, Umm al-Mu'ayyad, she was the most famous woman scholar of the religious law; she occupied the chair of teaching and taught jurisprudence and law, and obtained from the most important scholars and jurists of her age testimonials to her extraordinary ability and her wide learning.

The influence and prominence of woman in this age was not confined to the women of the upper class, such as al-Khayzuran, 'Ulayya, Zubayda, Buran, and al-'Abbasa, but passed beyond them to the women of the common people. There were Arab girls who went out to war and led armies, who composed verse and debated with men in the marketplaces of literature and art. Such was "Fadl" the poetess, whose poetry was counted among the most precious literature the reign of al-Mutawakkil produced. And there is the Sheikha "Shuhda," who lectured in Baghdad in the sixth century of the Hijra on history and letters, and who was famous for the beauty and perfection of her handwriting. And there is 'Ubayda al-Tunburiyya, whose fame spread in the reign of al-Mu'tasim, together with the beauty, the fine voice, and the skill in playing for which she was noted.

Women in the days of Arab civilization attained a progress that did not fall to their sisters in Europe until modern times. The difference was vast between the condition of the Abbasid woman and that of the woman of the West at that time. The history of Garan Loloheran relates, of the harsh treatment of women in the age of Charlemagne, and of Charlemagne's own treatment of them, the following: "The emperor Charlemagne fell upon his sister in the course of a dispute, seized her by the hair, beat her severely, and with his iron gauntlet broke three of her teeth."

When the end of the tenth century came and the Buyids took power, woman's freedom was restricted; she was secluded from men, and the veil was imposed upon her. The brilliant civilization of the early caliphs faded in the era of the Arabs' heirs, and especially the Turks; woman's standing dwindled greatly and sank to the lowest depths — those described by the Thousand and One Nights, in which woman was made the exemplar of cunning and malice, the fount of corruption and base thoughts. And this letter, which Abu Bakr al-Khwarizmi (1002 A.D.) sent to a friend, consoling him on the loss of his daughter, shows us the depth to which woman had descended after all that glory and grandeur; he wrote: "Were it not for what you have mentioned of her modesty, and what I have learned of the rare excellences of her case, I should be nearer to congratulation than to condolence; for the covering of shameful things is among the good deeds, and the burying of daughters among the noble ones; and we live in a time in which, when one of us sends his womenfolk on before him, he has perfected his blessing; and when he escorts his precious daughter as a bride to the grave, he has attained his heart's desire in a son-in-law."

And so the condition of woman remained — stagnation, veiling, seclusion, and degradation — until the late nineteenth century, when her star began to shine anew and she began to take her fitting place in society.