“Medieval Court Poetry,” Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vol. 1, pp. 651-654.

Medieval Court Poetry | 651 Gallagher, Nancy Elizabeth. Egypt’s Other Wars: Epi- Nanji, Azim A. “Medical Ethics and the Islamic Tradi- demics and the Politics of Public Health. Syracuse, tion.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 13 (1988): N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990. Shows how 257–275. malaria, relapsing fever, and cholera became major Rahman, Fazlur. Health and Medicine in the Islamic political issues in the post–World War II era. Tradition: Change and Identity. New York: Cross- Gallagher, Nancy Elizabeth. Medicine and Power in road, 1987. Indispensable study of Islamic ethics, Tunisia, 1780–1900. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: medicine, and health, beginning with a comprehen- Cambridge University Press, 1983. Discusses the sive analysis of “Wellness and Illness in the Islamic transition from Galenic-Islamic to Western medi- World View.” cine in Tunisia in the context of European political Rispler-Chaim, Vardit. “Islamic Medical Ethics in the and economic expansion. Twentieth Century.” Journal of Medical Ethics 15 Good, Byron. “The Transformation of Health Care in (1989): 203–208. Modern Iranian History.” In Modern Iran: The Dia- Rispler-Chaim, Vardit. Islamic Medical Ethics in the lectics of Continuity and Change, edited by Michael Twentieth Century. Leiden, Netherlands, and New Bonine and Nikki R. Keddie, pp. 59–82. Albany: York: Brill, 1993. State University of New York Press, 1981. Rispler-Chaim, Vardit. Disability in Islamic Law. Dor- Inhorn, Marcia C. Local Babies, Global Science: Gender, drecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2006. Religion, and In Vitro Fertilization in Egypt. New Rispler-Chaim, Vardit, ed. Special issue of Medicine York: Routledge, 2003. and Law 21 (2002) dedicated to Muslim medical Inhorn, Marcia C. The New Arab Men: Emergent Mas- ethics and law. culinities, Technologies, and Islam in the Middle East. Sonbol, Amira El Azhary. The Creation of a Medical Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012. Profession in Egypt, 1800–1922. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syra- Inhorn has edited and co-edited numerous volumes cuse University Press, 1992. Surveys the introduc- that pertain to issues of health and technology across tion of Western medical institutions into Egypt. the Muslim world. Yacoub, Ahmed Abdel Aziz. The Fiqh of Medicine: Inhorn, Marcia C. Quest for Conception: Gender, Infer- Responses in Islamic Jurisprudence to Advances in tility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions. Philadelphia: Medical Science. London: Ta-Ha, 2001. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Nancy E. Gallagher Jundī, Aḥmad Rajāʾī, ed. al-Abnāth wa-aʿmāl al- Updated by Yasmin Safian, Robert Gleave, Muʾtamar al-ʿĀlamī al-Thānīʿan al-Tibb al-Islāmī and Miri Shefer-Mossensohn [Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Islamic Medicine]. Kuwait: Munazzamat al-Tibb al-Islamic, 1982. Khan, Muhammad Salim. Islamic Medicine. London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1986. Argues that the creative Medieval Court Poetry. The first thought, balanced lifestyle, and healing forces hint of court poetry in the Arabo-Islamic cultural known to the Islamic medical tradition can reform memory begins with the first courts in the pre- modern medicine. Islamic era, such as those of the Ghassānids (in Kuhnke, LaVerne. Lives at Risk: Public Health in present-day Syria) and Lakhmids (in present-day Nineteenth-Century Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Discusses epidemics of Iraq) in roughly the sixth century ce Those courts cholera, plague, and smallpox, as well as Western bequeathed the poetry of ʿAlqamah ibn ʿAbadah medical institutions introduced by Muḥammad and al-Nābighah al-Dhubyānī. In terms of style, ʿAlī. these early poets enshrined the ritual tripartite Morsy, Soheir A. “Towards a Political Economy of structure of the Arabic ode (qaṣīdah), and in Health: A Critical Note on the Medical Anthro- terms of function they set models of poetry that pology of the Middle East.” Social Science and Medi- cine 15B (1981): 159–163. Provides background to the function in society as ransom, gift exchange, study of traditional medicine. oath, apology, and/or peace offering. Likewise, as 652 | Medieval Court Poetry the Prophet Muḥammad gained political and For the purpose of forging a new common- spiritual influence, Ḥassān ibn Thābit (d. 674) and wealth, poets in particular deployed the female Kaʿb ibn Zuhayr (d. 7th century) composed beloved for varied and diverging purposes as a poetry projecting a wise-kingly reputation that metaphor. In praise poetry, the female beloved served as an interface for those seeking the was often an avatar for the male patron, such as a Prophet’s favor. The Prophet’s earthly need for caliph or governor, where the poet might protest poetry would enshrine many genres, such as his treatment at the hands of a cold beloved as a praise (madīḥ) and even wine poetry (khamrīyah), coded critique of political authority. In tragic love despite the new-fangled Qurʾānic taboo, as insig- poetry, a series of couples emerged, such as Dhul nias of authority that were particularly “Islamic.” Rummah–Mayyah and Majnūn-Laylī, where the Court poetry flourished with the first empire poet projects the female beloved as indifferent builders of Islam, namely the Umayyads, from and toying with his vulnerabilities, dramatizing a 661–750. The Umayyads looked to their Byzan- range of maddening discontents in an era of un- tine and Persian peers for insignias of power, such precedented trauma that sullied a putatively as coinage, monuments, and palaces, and, of sacred ummah. Embodying the tragedy and am- course, viral poetry that was transmitted by public bivalence that many felt, Dhul Rummah says, performance. “Mayyah is the disease; she is the cure.” Con- The Umayyad era was paradoxical, though: versely in romantic love poetry (ghazal), the While the Umayyads enjoyed tremendous global figure of the female beloved was often deployed reach, building a commonwealth from the Atlantic to connote hopeful attainment of an object to the Indus Valley, they mismanaged two civil desired. wars in their own backyard that traumatized the It is assumed in today’s scholarship that Muslim ummah, as believers witnessed the Proph- women contributed little to Islamic court et’s kin and religion riven by war. Poets stepped in poetry, but this is patently wrong. Poetesses like to guide and rehabilitate the Umayyads, while at al-Khansāʾ (d. 7th century) and al-Ḥurqah (d. the same time dressing the gaping wounds of the 7th century) composed lament (marthīyah) and commonwealth with melodious, infectious poetry incitement to fight (taḥrīḍ) and, most surpris- and song. Poets inherited a mythic role from the ingly, a warrior poetess dubbed al-Hujayjah, of pre-Islamic era as oracle-rascal heroes, and they the Banū Shaybān, raised armies and built mili- exercised that influence to reflect and shape an ex- tary alliances to defend against an attack by the panse of human needs and emotions, which forged Sassanian emperor in the Battle of Dhū Qār, a a new universal imagined community: hopeful monumental battle for early Islamic culture that love poetry (ghazal), tragic love poetry (ʿudhrī), dispelled the Sassanian’s aura of invincibility. lampoon (hijāʾ), comic flytings (naqāʾiḍ), heroic Later, at the Umayyad court, Laylā al-Akhyalīyah praise of persons or places (madīḥ), heroic boast (d. c. 704) used her poetic skill to shame the of self or people (fakhr), elegy of persons or places court into making concessions, to lampoon a (rithāʾ), and those celebrating wine (khamrīyah) or rival poet, al-Nābighah al-Jaʿdī (d. 684), and to comic bacchanalia (mujūn). Later, in the ʿAbbāsid immortalize her deceased lover, Tawbah. Lore era, these older genres morphed to meet emerging about Layla trumpets her capacity to over- audience demands, and new genres developed, whelm with her sharp wit any man naive enough such as those romanticizing valor (ḥamāsah) and to confront her: When the Umayyad caliph hunting (ṭardīyāt). ʿAbd al-Malik ibn asked her publicly, “What  Medieval Court Poetry | 653 did Tawbah see in you that made him love you?” Andalusia, female hosts, too, held single-sex and She parried, “What did people see in you that mixed salons, where men and women could de- they made you caliph?” claim court poetry or sing it to the strum of In retrospect we can discern four overlapping a lute. persona types for poetesses in the Middle Ages: It is often assumed that court and folk poetry the grieving mother/sister/daughter (al-Khansāʾ, were antithetical, but recent research has shown al-Khirniq bint Badr, and al-Fāriʿah bint that, despite the court’s elitism, in practice there Shaddād), the warrior-diplomat (al-Hujayjah), was a surprising degree of interplay. The elites the princess (al-Ḥurqah, ʿUlayyah bint al-Mahdī, often looked down upon the lower classes, but and Walladah bint al-Mustakfī), and the courte- they also paradoxically romanticized the desert san-ascetic (ʿArīb, Shāriyah, and Rābiʿah al- and the Bedouins. The ode (qaṣīdah) began as a ʿAdawīyah). Rābiʿah’s biography in particular Bedouin genre composed and performed in the projects a paradoxical persona that embodies the hinterlands of Arabia and evoked desertscapes complimentary opposites of sexuality and saintli- and culture. Long after Islamic culture became ness. ʿAbd al-Amīr Muhannā, in his anthology, imperial and urban, poets continued to channel catalogs the work of more than four hundred po- that romance particularly in the elegiac nostalgic etesses across the centuries. The visibility and first section of the ode, the nasīb, with wistful impact of these voices was likely unparalleled tropes such as the abandoned campground in any other medieval culture, though scholars (manzil), desert abode (dār), campfire stones have yet to examine the factors that supported (athāfī), and traces in the sand (rusūm). This that pattern. almost ritual practice in effect rendered no- In the ʿAbbāsid era, from 750 onward, court madism the archetypal human condition. poetry increasingly appealed to a broader public that was ethnically more diverse and included BIBLIOGRAPHY men and women who rose to noble status, as well as an emerging sub-nobility, sometimes referred Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī. Kitāb al-aghānī [The Book of Songs]. Edited by al-Najdī Nāṣif, under Muḥammad to as aḥsāb. This sub-nobility included chancery Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm. 24 vols. Cairo, Egypt: al-Hayʾa workers, judges, and a burgeoning class of mer- al-Maṣrīyah al-ʿĀmmah lil-Kitāb, 1992–1993. chants. By the tenth century it became conspic- Ali, Samer M. Arabic Literary Salons in the Islamic uous that court poetry was no longer primarily Middle Ages: Poetry, Public Performance, and the the plaything of the court. However, rather than Presentation of the Past. Notre Dame, Ind.: Univer- aping courtly culture, the sub-nobility adapted sity of Notre Dame Press, 2010. Ali, Samir M. “The Rise of the Abbasid Public Sphere: it and to a large extent democratized the aes- The Case of al-Mutanabbi and Three Middle Rank- thetics and interests reflected in the literature. For ing Patrons.” Al-Qantara: Revista de Estudios Árabes, example, salons spread like rhizomes in the ninth special issue on patronage in Islamic history, 29, no. and tenth centuries among the sub-nobility in the 2 (2008): 467–494. cities; they became less hierarchical and more Hammond, Marlé. Beyond Elegy: Classical Arabic egalitarian; there was greater emphasis on turn Women’s Poetry in Context. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. taking, tolerance of foibles, and a warm socia- Meisami, Julie Scott. Medieval Persian Court Poetry. bility leavened by wine, flowers, fruits, and the Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987. occasional sprig of basil to awaken the senses. Muhannā, ʿAbd al-Amīr ʿAlī. Muʿjam al-nisāʾ al- The story of Bayad and Riyad illustrates how, in shāʿirāt fī al-jāhilīyah wa-al-Islām: Khuṭwah naḥwah 654 | Medieval Court Poetry muʿjam mutakāmil. Beirut, Lebanon: Dār al-Kutub menstruating women from touching the Qurʾān. al-ʿIlmīyah, 1990. It has become habitual throughout the Muslim Stetkevych, Jaroslav. The Zephyrs of Najd: The Poetics of world to link verse 56:79 (“No one may touch it Nostalgia in the Classical Arabic Nasīb. Chicago: but the pure”) to the issue, despite its lack of any University of Chicago Press, 1993. Stetkevych, Suzanne Pinckney. The Mute Immortals contextual bearing on the physical Qurʾān or the Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual. purity status of humans. Yet, some menstruants Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993. will only touch the pages of the Qurʾān via a Stetkevych, Suzanne Pinckney. The Poetics of Islamic medium or when wearing gloves. Fatwās have Legitimacy: Myth, Gender, and Ceremony in the Clas- been issued, notably from Saudi Arabia, that sical Arabic Ode. Bloomington: Indiana University menstruating female students may freely study Press, 2002. Qurʾān during menstruation. Samer M. Ali Ibn Kathīr’s (d. 1373ce) exegesis details the Prophet’s habits with his menstruating wives. He would eat with ʿĀʾishah and drink from the same Menstruation. Like sexual emission, vessel and recite Qurʾān while reclining in her menstruation is a state necessitating full-bath lus- lap. He gave license to all forms of spousal inti- tration before the Muslim can obtain the ritual macy with the exception of vaginal intercourse; purity required for worship. The requisite ele- this is the meaning that many exegetes give to ments are an intention to remove major impurity; “keep away from women in the maḥīḍ (literally, washing the hands and then the genitals thor- place of menstruation)” (2:222). This verse also oughly; performing the ritual ablution (wudūʿ?); calls menstruation “adhan” (harm): some exe- washing the entire body, beginning with the head getes have historically and currently defined this (to the roots of the hair) and right side of the as meaning menstruation is harmful to men. body, then continuing to the left. Others insist that it is harm to the woman, who Ḥadīth reports attributed to Muḥammad’s wife “suffers” monthly. Many scholars (notably al- ʿĀʾishah claim that women were “ordered” Sayyid Sābiq al-Qurṭubī) have included the infa- (nuʿmar) to make up fasts missed as a result of mous ḥadīth about “deficiencies of (woman’s) the exemption granted menstruants and not or- mind and religion” in discussions on menstrua- dered to make up prayers missed for the same tion and purity. However, classical and post- reason. In one ḥadīth, the Prophet explains that classical jurists generally structured laws of menstruation is “decreed” for the daughters of purity in gender-neutral ways, even engaging in Adam, positioning it as “an integral part of God’s debates that challenged the notion that menstru- plan . . . a biological fact” rather than a punish- ation rendered a woman deficient in religion ment (Katz, 198). The euphemism used repeat- (Katz, 198–199). edly by the Prophet to refer to menstruation is Modern attitudes toward menstruation vary nafs (“self ” or “soul”), explained by Ibn Qutayba widely according to levels of education and en- (d. 889ce) as the metaphor the Arabs used for trenched cultural practices. In areas as diverse as blood, “due to blood’s connectedness with or Morocco, Syria, Egypt, and the United States, nearness to, or causality of life” (Tafsīr Gharīb al- some pregnant women ignore the concession to Qurʾān, 25). leave off fasting, illustrating their belief that Although no ḥadīth suggests it, the schools of the menstruant’s Ramadan fast is deficient. In law (both Sunnī and Shīʿī) unanimously restrict Malay Muslim culture, euphemisms are generally