Of Ladies and Lesbians and Books On Women From The Third/Ninth and Fourth/Tenth Centuries

Journal of Abbasid Studies 4 (2017) 187-210
brill.com/jas
Of Ladies and Lesbians and Books on Women from

the Third/Ninth and Fourth/Tenth Centuries
Pernilla Myrne
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
pernilla.myrne@gu.se
Abstract
Information about women in Abbasid society — and especially the subgroups of

mutaẓarrifāt, ladies, and saḥḥaqāt, lesbians — is gathered from two extant sources
that explicitly deal with the subject: al-Muwashshā, “The Painted Cloth,” by al-Washshāʾ
(d. 325/936-7) and Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha, composed some fifty years later by ʿAlī b. Naṣr
al-Kātib. The Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha is an erotic compendium that relies heavily on earlier
sources, al-Muwashshā included; however, most of the works cited are lost. A survey
of book-titles from the same period indicates that a good many books about women
were written at the time. Representations of ladies and lesbians as they appear from
the two sources and surveyed lists of book-titles suggest a complex picture of the lady-
lesbian that changed over time. That some of the books dealing with the subject were
still available some six-hundred years later shows that the erotic lore of the Abbasids
continued to arouse interest for centuries.
Keywords
Abbasid culture – homosexuality – refinement – saḥq – slave-girls – ẓarīf
Introduction
The late fourth/tenth century erotic compendium Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha,

“Encyclopaedia of Pleasure,” contains several chapters on different types of
love and intimate relations.1 A main division is made between heterosexuality
1 The Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha, written by a certain ʿAlī b. Naṣr al-Kātib toward the end of the
fourth/tenth century, is the earliest extant work of the kind. The work is partly edited and
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi 10.1163/22142371-12340033

188 Myrne
on the one hand, and male and female homosexuality on the other. In the first
of these chapters proponents of the three main categories defend their posi-
tions in a section of short poems. A ẓarīf (a gentleman) wants to know who
would be the happiest, “a man who has captured a woman, a young man who
has captured a gazelle, or a woman with another woman, who do not desire
men”.2 The first to answer is a woman who defends her desire for women:
We are two women and sisters, who are equal in our reunion
One at the time, we mount pleasure when we are together
Let every derider leave us alone, we are superior to men3
The second, a male poet, defends his love for a boy, beautiful like a gazelle;
and the third defends the love between men and women. His argument is per-
haps the most compelling, as he emphasizes the divine will behind heterosexu-
ality. People who are attracted to the opposite sex, he hints, have the advantage
of being able to enjoy sexual relations both legally and illicitly, whereas the
other orientations are confined to illicit sex.
It is noteworthy that the male poet who explains his preference for boys
does so in terms of his lover’s outstanding beauty and social competence.
Apparently, the boy-lover combines a female role of being subservient with
that of a male friend. The female poet, instead, declares that she and her girl-
friend (“sister”) are equal, they take turns in satisfying themselves but there is
no set division between a passive and an active partner.4
The female poet who declares herself a saḥḥāqa (lesbian) is introduced in
the Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha as min al-mutaẓarrifāt, “from amongst the ladies,” and
as such she seems to belong to a subgroup in society, whose members, for dif-
ferent reasons, have renounced male company, at least temporarily. Whether
this subgroup was merely fictional, a literary motif without any resemblance
in reality, is virtually impossible to establish on the basis of Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha
alone. Not only relies this erotic encyclopaedia heavily on earlier literature that
translated, but the complete text is only available in manuscripts. See Rowson, Arabic, and
Myrne, Beloved.
2 For ẓarīf, see Montgomery, Ẓarīf, and below.
3 The sources for this poem are three manuscripts of Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha covering the first
part of the book. I follow the reading in MS Fatih 3729, fol. 41b, which in this case is more
grammatically correct. All three have problems with the dual; MS Aya Sofya 3836, 41b, and MS
Chester Beatty ar 4635 48a-b have “we are afraid of men” instead of “we are superior to men.”
4 Elsewhere, the author of Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha describes men who take turns in being the ac-
tive partner in homosexual intercourse, but the relationship between a man and a boy, as in
this poem, is clearly hierarchical.

Of Ladies and Lesbians and Books on Women 189
is mostly lost, but the poetry and anecdotes it contains are also genre specific
and may not have the slightest relation with contemporary society.
In an attempt to get a better understanding of the position of mutaẓarrifāt
and saḥḥaqāt in Abbasid society, I compare in this article information from two
extant sources that explicitly deal with the subject: al-Muwashshā, “The Painted
Cloth,” by al-Washshāʾ (ca. 255/869-325/936-7) and the above mentioned Jawāmiʿ
al-ladhdha, composed some fifty years later by ʿAlī b. Naṣr al-Kātib. The informa-
tion thus gathered gives insight into how norms about women and refinement
were set and transformed over time and in different social contexts.
As just mentioned, the Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha relies on earlier sources, dating
from the time of al-Muwashshā onwards as well as from before. Many referenc-
es to and citations from books on women are found in this erotic encyclopae-
dia, but most of these works are lost. A survey of book-titles and citations from
the period presented in this article indicates that there was once a substan-
tial literature on women in general and on particular subgroups of women in
Abbasid society. The information from Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha and the Muwashshā
taken together with the survey of book-titles and citations from works now
lost allow us a glimpse into a lively literary universe populated by women who,
helped by a literary technique that lets them speak in the first person, enhance
their identity as a distinct social group.
The Mutaẓarrifāt in al-Muwashshā
The female poet expressing her desire for a woman, is called “one of the mutaẓar
rifāt,” a plural meaning “elegant women, ladies.” The singular, mutaẓarrifa, is
seldom used in Abbasid sources; by far the most common word for a lady is
ẓarīfa, the feminine of ẓarīf. The two words have the same meaning, but the
plural mutaẓarrifāt apparently has further implications. The mutaẓarrifāt
seem to denote a specific social group, whereas ẓarīfa is an epithet to be given
to any elegant woman. There was a certain interest for this group of ladies; at
least three books were devoted to them by authors who lived in Baghdad in
the third/ninth and early fourth/tenth centuries. According to the Fihrist of
Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Mutaẓarrifāt (“Book on Elegant Women”) or Akhbār al-
mutaẓarrifāt (“Accounts about Elegant Women”) were the titles of works writ-
ten by Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr (204/819-280/893), his son ʿUbayd Allāh (d. 313/925),
and al-Washshāʾ (ca. 255/869-325/936-7).5 None of the books has survived, and
5 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, I, 263, 452, 453; see Ghazi, Un group social, 51; also Rosenthal, Aḥmad b.
Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr; Toorawa, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr; Raven, al-Washshāʾ.

190 Myrne
we can only speculate about their content. However, al-Washshāʾ refers to

specific groups of ladies as mutaẓarrifāt in his etiquette book al-Muwashshā,
where they are the counterparts of al-ẓurafā’, the more familiar group of so-
phisticated elite men, who together made up the refined society of the Abbasid
capital.6
Al-Washshāʾ describes their lavish clothing, perfume, and jewelry and calls
them mutaẓarrifāt al-quṣūr, “elegant ladies of the castles,” mutaẓarrifāt al-
qiyān, “elegant slave-singers,” or just mutaẓarrifāt al-nisā’, “elegant women.”7
They seem to be women who take active participation in sophisticated so-
ciety life, where personal activities such as clothing, eating, and engaging in
love affairs are part and parcel of cultural capital and every single gesture and
causal word is evaluated by companions adding to or reducing that capital.
Al-Washshāʾ gives advice of how to express refinement by choice of personal
attire, food and drink, as well as appropriate language in social interactions,
illustrated by examples of ẓurafāʾ and mutaẓarrifāt who he himself or his infor-
mants and sources have seen in the palaces and salons of Baghdad.
The social life in Abbasid Baghdad is the subject of numerous anecdotes
in classical Arabic literature, purporting to represent the witty dialogues and
poetic exchanges of the cultural elite. A major achievement of al-Muwashshā
is the representation of a visual culture where literature interacts with the ma-
terial, and poetic sentences are engraved, embroidered or written on personal
attire, tableware, textile, furniture and structures.
The inscribed objects had probably a symbolic value for the refined elite;
the exclusiveness of the material was as important as the inscribed texts. They
also had a social value, reflecting shared values and tastes of the elite, and dis-
played, as it were, on a scene, as the inscribed texts were not only read by those
present, but also shared with a wider audience. Al-Washshāʾ relates about
an exchange of accusations, written on rings, between a female singer and
Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Malik al-Zayyāt, who was the vizier of several caliphs
until he died in prison 233/847.8 They had a love affair, which Muḥammad
ended, and the singer, feeling abandoned, wrote an accusation on the stone
of her ring. This reached Muḥammad, who in turn wrote an answer to the ac-
cusation on his own ring. When the singer was informed about this, she erased
her initial accusation and wrote a new one, and so they continued. Had it not
been for visitors who conveyed the words the lovers exchanged on their rings,
6 See Montgomery, Ẓarīf.

7 Cf. Ghazi, Un group social, 54, 56-59.
8 Washshāʿ, Muwashshā, 165. The verb used in this anecdote and subsequent poem is kataba,
write, whereas the other examples of text on rings use naqasha, engrave.

the argument would not have taken place. The historical value of this anecdote
is diminished by the fact that al-Washshāʾ’s source is a poem attributed to the
same Muḥammad b. al-Zayyāṭ who is also the main character of the anecdote,
whereas the singer remains anonymous. Nevertheless, it expresses an ideal of
a refined conversation as a performance, the dialogue, in this case, being pre-
sented by the audience.
Most people depicted in al-Muwashshā are men, and the intended readers
are obviously men as well. There are, however, enough examples of women’s
refinement and advice about women’s attire to presume that it was also read
by women. The recommendation about women’s clothing and the samples
of women’s verses were probably intended for female readers, that is, the
mutaẓarrifāṭ of al-Washshāʾ’s time. The first part of al-Muwashshā treats,
among other things, the idea that chaste love, characterized by suffering and
yearning, is more refined than physical love; he also dwells upon women’s
(especially singers’) treacherous nature. Al-Washshāʾ’s female examples are
primarily from the early Islamic era, some of them elite women who became
stock characters in adab literature. Some are presented as devoted lovers, loyal
until death, whereas a few are treacherous and fickle. In the last part of the
book, al-Washshāʾ provides samples of the art of refined people. Gentlemen
engraved pens and furniture with poems and wisdom and painted expressions
on structures. Ladies, on the other hand, were restricted to use their clothes
and bodies; they embroidered their garments and waistbands with poetic sen-
tences and painted their sandals, hands and feet. All women in al-Washshāʾ’s
examples are identifiable as Abbasid slave women ( jawārī) or freed slaves,
some of them singers or musicians. Half of the women are named, and most of
the others are identified by the names of their owners.
The majority of women whose art is depicted in al-Muwashshā, lived de-
cades before al-Washshāʾ was born; he knew only a few of them himself. His
information comes from other sources, oral or written, and although he does
not mention Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr’s book on mutaẓarrifāt, some accounts seem
to have been taken from it. Despite using examples from the past, he seems to
have in mind a certain group of contemporary women when he gives advice on
clothing and appropriate texts for decoration.
Al-Washshāʾ, who was primarily known as a grammarian and believed to
have been a teacher, perhaps at court, had also access to information from con-
temporary women. One of his pupils was Munya al-Kātiba, a slave of Caliph
al-Muʿtamid (256-79/870-92).9 He was probably too young to have been her
9 Raven, al-Washshāʾ.

192 Myrne
teacher during the lifetime of al-Muʿtamid, but she probably remained at the
royal palace after the death of her owner and could have been his informant.
According to al-Washshāʾ, he had also access to information from at least a
few other palace women. For example, he asks one of the palace’s mutaẓarrifāt
about what she considers as ẓarf (elegance). She answers: “One who is eloquent
and chaste is the perfect ẓarīf for us.”10 This is at once the central message of
the book: chastity and eloquence are necessary components of elegance and
sophistication, combined with a taste for luxurious apparel and food a perfect
ẓarīf is made.
Al-Washshāʾ’s idea of chastity as an essential component of ẓarf is often taken
as an example of the courtly ideal of his time. Nonetheless, al-Muwashshā is
not necessarily a description of the manners of his time, it rather promotes a
value system in which chastity is part of claims of superiority. Elsewhere, how-
ever, we read stories that reveal a more complex attitude to chastity among
Abbasid elite women than the one presented in al-Muwashshā. The Kitāb al-
Aghānī, for instance, mentions the famous singer ʿArīb who had been a free
woman since the days of al-Muʿtaṣim and had lived a love life far from chas-
tity. She spent her last years at al-Muʿtamid’s court or at least with regualr ac-
cess to it. According to various anecdotes, members of the Abbasid family and
high officials loved to hear her talking about her sexual preferences and gos-
siped about her during their gatherings.11 When al-Washshāʾ mentions ʿArīb
in al-Muwashshā, he calls her ”one of the slave-girls of the Abbasids,” without
acknowledging her fame.12 Al-Washshāʾ’s attitude towards female singers and
musicians is complex as well — in the part of al-Muwashshā that is specifically
devoted to them, al-Washshāʾ condemns them, but in other parts he uses sev-
eral singers to illustrate elegant art.13
Who were the mutaẓarrifāṭ? A ẓarīf was, as pointed out by James Montgomery,
“a type of adīb,” a man who engaged in literary activities and was part of the
intellectual circles in the urban centers of the Abbasid Empire. He was also
well informed about cultural trends. The ẓurafāʾ have been identified as a so-
cial group who came from the upper strata of society. They were poets and lit-
térateurs, professional men and officials, or they belonged to the ruling family.
10 Washshāʾ, Muwashshā, 42.

11 See ʿArīb’s biography in Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, XXI, 54-87. On the Ahgānī’s sources of informa-
tion about women, see Fleischhammer, Die Quellen; Kilpatrick, Making the Great Book.
12 Washshāʾ, Muwashsha, 167.
13 Dhamm al-qiyān was already a literary topos by the time of al-Washshāʾ, inspired by,
among others, al-Jāḥiẓ and his Risālat al-qiyān.

Their female counterparts are more elusive as the term mutaẓarrifa is much
less employed than the male term ẓarīf. They seem to have been privileged
urban women and socialites, known for their stylishness and glamour.
Most of the mutaẓarrifāt seem to have been jawārī, slave courtesans, concu-
bines, and companions of the Abbasid elite. Although they were enslaved, they
belonged to the highest strata of society, and in contrast to their male counter-
parts, their cultural capital had a triple value: it had an impact on their own
social standing, that of their owners, as well as on their market value, should
their owners wish to sell them. Even if they lived a privileged life with enough
time and money to cultivate an interest for fashion and engage in society, they
were nonetheless slaves with restricted agency.
The Abbasid jawārī, high-class courtesans, have fascinated readers and histo-
rians for centuries, and some of them had standings and wealth that surpassed
that of most free women. Although the primary sources about these women
are problematic to use as historical sources, it can be assumed that their prin-
cipal role was to add to the glory of their masters. Their “elegance” was not only
theirs, but also their owners’. As long as they were slaves, the poems written on
their bodies or embroidered on their clothes could as well represent the refine-
ment of their owners, or describe the slave women themselves for potential
buyers or patrons. One of the samples of elegant art in al-Muwashshā is a poem
about the sufferings of love, written with henna on the hand of a jāriya named
Shamārīkh. Al-Washshāʾ mentions specifically that it was her owner, a woman
called al-Māhāniyya, who wrote it.14 Another example is a verse written on the
forehead of a jāriya who was put on display for sale — al-Washshāʾ had seen
her with his own eyes.15 The verse alludes to a beautiful woman, perhaps the
slave herself, and, considering the situation, it was probably there to attract
select buyers with a cultural interest, and hence increase her monetary value.
As such, a poem written on the body or clothes of a slave woman could also be
part of a marketing strategy, attracting potential buyers.
Mutaẓarrifāt and Female Same-sex Desire
Most of the verses embroidered, engraved, or written on women’s attire have

to do with love. They often take the form of messages to their lovers. Jawārī
famously engaged in love affairs by their own free will, so it is not impossi-
ble that the verses expressed real affection, but in many (or most) cases their
14 Washshāʿ, Muwashshā, 183.

15 Ibid., 183.

194 Myrne
“lovers” were their owners, which restricted their agency. Some of the poems
express love for a woman. With the little information we have, however, it is
not possible to recognize these verses as expressing same-sex desire, as they
are not necessarily the female bearer’s own words. Their purpose was perhaps
to praise an owner, who happened to be a woman. This may have been the case
with the jāriya of Ḥamdūna bt. al-Mahdī who wrote a love poem to a woman
on her shoe,16 and the jāriya of Fāṭima bt. Muḥammad bt. ʿImrān al-Kātib who
had a poem about her subservient love for a woman written with musk on her
cheek.17 In both cases, the slave-girl’s expression of love is a poetic topos, sym-
bolizing the will to submit and serve her owner.
There is one anecdote in al-Muwashshā, however, where a female character
explicitly loves another woman. It is a story about unfulfilled love and suffering
leading to death, a favourite topic in the narratives al-Washshāʾ uses to sub-
stantiate his claims about chaste love. Unusually, this particular story is a love
triangle: a young woman loves a young man, but the young man loves a female
singer, who in turn loves the young woman.18 It was supposedly narrated by the
young woman’s father in the majlis of al-ʿUtbī (probably the poet from Basra,
d. 228/842-3). He had, at another majlis, heard the singer performing a song
about love’s inevitable suffering, which caused the young man’s immediate
death. Upon hearing about the death of the young man, his daughter perished,
which, in turn, caused the death of the singer.
Chaste love is in line with the ideal of al-Muwashshā, but there are other
instances in Abbasid literature where female same-sex desire is less virtuous.
Some examples come from the court of Caliph al-Mutawakkil (232-47/847-61),
before al-Washshāʾ was born. One anecdote is about the above mentioned
court singer ʿArīb. The caliph’s jawārī whisper about her secret love affair with a
palace eunuch and she answers by calling them saḥḥāqāt, lesbians.19 The word
is used here invectively, but lesbianism was treated as a recognized sexual ori-
entation at the same court, which produced a few books entirely devoted to
the subject of same-sex desire.
16 Ibid., 182.

17 Ibid., 183-184. Two jawārī of Ḥamdūna bt. al-Mahdī (sister of Hārūn al-Rashīd) figure in
Muwashshā (175, 182), as well as a Bint al-Mahdī, perhaps Ḥamdūna, who wrote with gold
on a cup, praising a beautiful “gazelle” (187). She may have been her half sister, ʿUlayya
bint al-Mahdī, who was more famous for her poetry.
18 Ibid., 61-62.
19 Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, XXI, 71-72. Rowson (Categorization, 77, n. 36) translates saḥḥāqa as “trib-
ade,” because the term refers to “an activity rather than to choice of sexual partner.” The
activity is saḥq, “to grind.” In all examples used for this article, however, the saḥḥāqāt
choose female partners; that is why I translate saḥq as tribadism and saḥḥāqa as lesbian.

For instance, two of al-Mutawakkil’s boon companions wrote books on lesbi-

anism. One was written by the buffoon and scholar Abū l-ʿAnbas (213-275/828-
888) bearing the title Kitāb al-Saḥḥāqāt wa-l-baghghāʾīn, “Book on Lesbians
and Passive Sodomites.”20 Later biographers note Abū l-ʿAnbas’ multifaceted
personality; he was at the same time a jester who wrote books on mujūn, an
astrologer, and a faqīh, who had worked as a qadi.21 He wrote many books on
serious as well as amusing topics, and his book on tribadism and passive sod-
omy appears to belong to the latter, not the least as Ibn al-Nadīm lists it among
titillating, erotic stories.22 The book is mentioned in Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha and
in a passage attributed to Abū l-ʿAnbas, the “community of lesbians” (maʿshar
al-saḥḥāqāt) describe in a satirical manner the kind of woman they desire,
how they like her genitals, and the best ways of lesbian sexual intercourse.23
In another citation, perhaps from another of his books, Abū l-ʿAnbas makes a
serious attempt to explain tribadism.24 He claims to have asked the philoso-
pher and scholar al-Kindī (d. ca. 252/866) about saḥq, tribadism, and al-Kindī
answered that it is “a natural sexual appetite,” explaining it in accordance with
humoral theory.25 His fellow boon companion, Abū Ḥasan al-Namlī (d. ca
246/860), wrote on the same topic a book on tribadism (Kitāb al-Saḥq) and
one on passive sodomy (Kitāb al-Bighāʾ); both are listed by Ibn al-Nadīm in the
Fihrist, though not in the section on erotic literature.26 Another book written
by al-Namlī was regarded as titillating; it is about two women called Burjān
(or Bardān) and Ḥabāḥib who gave sexual advice to a king. Judging by the ci-
tations from this book in Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha, the female protagonists in al-
Namlī’s stories were voluptuous women whose sexual appetite overshadowed
their reason (see below).
Some citations dating from the end of the fourth/tenth century, again in-
dicate an association between female same-sex love and elegance. As we
have seen at the beginning of this article, the female poet who expressed her
desire for a woman is referred to as “one of the mutaẓarrifāt” in Jawāmiʿ al-
ladhdha. There is also a short section in the Fihrist entitled Asmāʾ al-ḥabāʾib
20 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, I, 468, II, 345.

21 Pellat, Abū l-ʿAnbas.
22 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, II, 345.
23 Ibn Naṣr, MS Aya Sofya, fols., 85a-b.
24 Ibid., fols., 83a-b.
25 Ibid., fol. 83a. I have not been able to find this or a similar text among al-Kindī’s works.
Ṣaḥq means “pounding, rubbing” and is used in the same sense as “tribadism”; see Rowson,
Categorization, 63, and 77, n. 36.
26 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, I, 469. Nothing is left of these two books by al-Namlī that I am
aware of.

196 Myrne
al-mutaẓarrifāt, “Names of Elegant Female Loved Ones,” which appears to be

a list of female same-sex couples.27 Each of these couples probably represents
a fictional love story. Elegance was an ideal in certain elite circles, and the as-
sociation of female same-sex love with elegance indicates that love between
women was conceivable and not entirely condemned in these circles. It seems
that readers of Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha and Fihrist did not consider the connec-
tion between female elegance and female same-sex desire as completely
astonishing.
The chapter on female same-sex relations in Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha is the old-
est extant substantial treatment of lesbianism and tribadism in Arabic. As we
have seen, it relies to some degree on Abū l-ʿAnbas’ writing on the subject.28 It
is difficult to distinguish where citations end, so it is not possible to properly
establish the extent of the reliance on Abū l-ʿAnbas. The chapter starts with a
discussion of the possible reasons for tribadism; al-Kindī’s explanation is fol-
lowed by attributions to Hippocrates, Galen and Ibn Māsawayh. Regardless of
whether they are correct, tribadism seems to have been a fairly well explored
topic in natural philosophy and medicine.
The bulk of the chapter, however, is devoted to lesbian women express-
ing their desires and explaining their sexual orientation. At the end, there is
a section where both women and men argue against it. The few women in this
section who are named could not be identified, but they are apparently free
women — only a few of them are said to be jawārī. The author starts this sec-
tion with a sociological explanation of tribadism and claims that some women
choose tribadism as an alternative of heterosexual intercourse either for fear
of loosing their virginity and good reputation, or for fear of pregnancy. These
claims are illustrated with poems such as
27 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, II, 329-330. Dodge (Fihrist 2, 721) translates the section title as
“Names of Loving and Fickle Girls.” Ghazi (La littérature d’imagination en arabe, 177) ar-
gues that although the women listed in pairs were indeed loving couples, their love was
chaste: “nous croyons que l’amour ʿuḏrī est un sentiment pouvant naître et se developer
entre deux cœurs feminine.” Amer (Medieval Arabic Lesbians, 219), instead, presupposes
that the couples are lesbians.
28 This, as well as the chapter on male same-sex relations is missing in the available edition
of Jawāmiʾ al-ladhdha, which only covers the last part of the work due to the use of an
incomplete manuscript; it is therefore often overlooked. A more detailed study of this
chapter will be published in a forthcoming monograph, entitled Female Sexuality in the
Early Medieval Islamic World.

How much we have practiced tribadism (saḥaqnā), my sister!

For ninety years and it is more enjoyable and concealed than the insert-
ing of penises29
and pregnancy, the knowledge of which would please the enemy and,
worse than that, the censure of the blamers
We are not imposed ḥadd punishment for tribadism, as for fornication
(zinā),
although it is more desirable for women who take the active role (fawāʿil)30
Unlike the satirical depiction of lesbian women in a quotation attributed to

Abū l-ʿAnbas, this poem is, like most others in the section, quite sober and
could be grounded in real experience. Interestingly, it alludes to women who
prefer to take the active role, something that is not elaborated further upon.
Although much of the material in the chapter on female same-sex love is seri-
ous, it is difficult to evaluate these representations; are they really women’s
words or merely satire? Perhaps they are a mix of both; the account attributed
to Abū l-ʿAnbas is more satirical than the poems that are unattributed.
In Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha, ʿAlī b. Naṣr gives examples of women who engage in
tribadism for these reasons, but most of them “recover” when they get mar-
ried. Only a few of them discover that saḥq is more pleasurable than nayk
(“fucking”) and start to reject men. Tribadism is described both as an active
choice — which could be made by any woman who had time and means to
engage in extra-marital relationships — and a sexual orientation which is pre-
ferred by some women. Tribadism, saḥq, is opposed to nayk, fucking, which is
the word used for penetrative sex in this context. There seems to be an ongoing
debate as to whether saḥq is more pleasurable than nayk, perhaps initiated
by a poem by Abū l-ʿAtāhiya, (d. 211/826), who, the sources tell us, had been in
love with a woman who preferred women. After having been spurned, he ad-
dressed a poem to “those who engage in tribadism” (dhawāt al-saḥq) in which
he argues for the superiority of nayk to saḥq.31
In the chapter on female same-sex desire in Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha, most
women prefer saḥq, defending it with words like
29 Fa-kam saḥaqnā yā ukhtī tisʿīna ḥijjatan asarru wa-akhfā min dukhūli l-fayāshilī. Tisʿīna,
“ninety, ninety times,” must be understood as “many times” or “for a long time.”
30 Ibn Naṣr, MS Fatih 3729, fol., 85a. The English translation of Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha, glosses
over the poems in this chapter, and parts of the text are abridged or omitted.
31 Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, IV, 24 and XV, 277-78.

198 Myrne
Praise the lord of the creation, my beloved, tribadism (saḥq) has made
our life agreeable
but fucking (nayk) makes its pursuers ugly, so may that which we love
last forever32
The poem is part of a series of love letters between women, which correspond
to the examples of love letters between elegant people in al-Muwashshā. There
are, in fact, some similarities between the group of saḥḥāqāt in Jawāmiʿ al-
ladhdha and the mutaẓarrifāt in al-Muwashshā. The literary representation of
ladies and lesbians positions them as groups with their own identity, admired
by society for their elegance on the one hand, and standing outside because
they are slaves or reject men on the other. The identification of lesbian women
as a group, however, might be entirely fictional, inspired by the representa-
tion of the mutaẓarrifāt. Some of the lesbian women are said to have engraved
mottos on their rings, similar to the elegant people in al-Muwashshā. These
lesbian mottos, however, are poles apart from the sober engravings on the rings
of the ẓurafāʾ. A lesbian woman named Wuhayba, for example, engraved on
her ring, “I seek protection by God from the penis and from the monk entering
the monastery.”33
The most striking difference between the saḥḥāqāt in Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha
and the mutaẓarrifāt in al-Muwashshā is the former’s explicit desire for sexual
satisfaction, which would have been considered as entirely inelegant by the
latter. Nevertheless, exactly what constitutes elegance changes with time and
so do gendered expectations. Thus, the definition of ẓarf offered by al-Washshā’
was not necessarily prevailing when Ibn Abī Ṭāhir was writing his book on the
same social group, or when Abū l-ʿAnbas wrote his one on lesbians associating
them with elegance. Likewise, a mutaẓarrifa at the time of al-Washshāʾ was not
necessarily the same mutaẓarrifa of late fourth/tenth century Baghdad.
It could be argued that differences in the understanding of “elegance” have
more to do with individual authors’ outlooks or differences in literary genre.
The author of Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha, ʿAlī b. Naṣr, wrote for men with pretensions
to be part of the elegant elite, just like al-Washshāʾ had done some fifty years
earlier. Contrary to al-Washshāʾ, however, ʿAlī b. Naṣr argued against the ideal
of chastity. He explicitly dedicates his erotic compendium to the ẓarīf, who is
expected to “achieve the excellence of manly virtue (muruwwa) and combine
the characteristics of chivalry (futuwwa)” by reading the book and following
32 Ibn Naṣr, Aya Sofya 3836, fol. 84b.

33 Wa-naqashat Wuhayba al-saḥḥāqa ʿalā khātimihā aʿūdhu bi-llāhi mina l-ayri wa-min
dukhūli l-qassi fī l-dayri; MS Aya Sofya 3836, fol. 84b.

its instructions,34 With sophisticated erotic knowledge and behaviour, a man

can distinguish himself from common people, in this case the most urgent out-
come of ẓarf.35
The ẓarīf does not have to remain chaste, he may engage in different types
of legal bonds (nikāḥ and mutʿa marriage as well as slave concubinage) and
at once enjoy extra-marital relations with women or men, if he so pleases. In
fact, ʿAlī b. Naṣr seems to have al-Washshāʾ in mind when he defends those
who claim that sexual reunion is necessary for long-lasting affection and in-
timacy, and therefore call sexual intercourse “the nails of love.”36 Al-Washshāʾ
also refers to this expression, but he sharply condemns it. He sides instead with
those who maintain that sexual union destroys love, a claim that ʿAlī b. Naṣr
dismisses as hypocrisy.37
Women’s Voices in Erotic Literature
The most striking example of the representation of lesbian women as a social

group is attributed to Abū l-ʿAnbas and probably taken from his book “Lesbians
and Passive Sodomites.” In a rather long monologue, the lesbians speak as a
group in first person plural: “We, the community of lesbians” (maʿshar al-
saḥḥāqāt), followed by an imaginative description of the women they prefer.38
The use of first-person speech and letting characters speak for themselves and
defend themselves in a debate, is a common literary device. In this case, Abū
l-ʿAnbas’ book was possibly structured as a dialogue between “the lesbians”
and “the passive sodomites.”
The use of direct speech in representations of women is characteristic for
Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha and many of its sources. It gives the impression that the
women tell their own story and represent themselves. In a humorous and quite
indecent boasting match, attributed to al-Jāhiẓ and quoted in Jawāmiʿ al-lad-
hdha, the vagina is successfully defended by a slave-girl, named Badīʿ, against
the penis, which in turn is defended by a young man of Banū Tamīm. In the
end, the two opponents find each other, the young man buys the slave-girl and
34 Ibn Naṣr, MS Fatih 3729, fols. 1b.2a. Al-Washshāʾ devotes a chapter to muruwwa in al-
Muwashshā, where he identifies chastity as a necessary component.
35 See Myrne, Pleasing the Beloved.
36 Ibn Naṣr, MS Aya Sofya 3836, fol. 42a; MS Fatih 3729, fol. 42a. See Myrne, Pleasing the
Beloved, 218-219.
37 Washshāʾ, Muwashshā, 76; see Myrne, ibid.
38 Ibn Naṣr, MS Aya Sofya 3836, fol. 85a.

200 Myrne
they live together happily ever after.39 In another long altercation, related by a
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. Aḥmad b. Yazdād al-Kātib al-Marwazī, a slave-girl defends
her sex against a slaveboy in a debate that goes far above the merits of the
sexual organs. Whereas the boy easily finds arguments for men’s superiority in
the literary tradition — he refers to ḥadīth, medical writing and poets, among
other sources — the girl does not lack forceful arguments either, mentioning
the merits of Fāṭima and other historic women. She is eventually successful
and wins the argument.40 These two “boasting matches” stand out in that the
protagonists defend themselves or their sexual organs. Al-Jāḥiẓ is credited
to have introduced this literary genre to the Abbasid audience and his Kitāb
Mufākharāt al-jawārī wa-l-ghilmān, “The Boasting Match between Slave-girls
and Slave-boys” became famous.41 In this particular boasting match, the real
argument is between men who prefer to have sex with a woman and those who
prefer a man.42 A boasting match with the same perspective — that of senior
men’s sexual preferences — was told by Aḥmad b. Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr and Aḥmad
b. al-Ṭayyib al-Sarakhsī, also quoted in Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha.43
ʿAlī b. Naṣr cites several fictional female authorities on sex and women’s
preferences, some of them appear as titles of erotic stories in Fihrist. One was
written by Abū l-Ḥasan al-Namlī, the boon companion of al-Mutawakkil, who
also wrote the above mentioned book about lesbianism and passive sodomy.
The book was called Barjān wa-Ḥubāḥib fī akhbār al-nisāʾ, “Burjān/Barjān and
Ḥabāḥib/Ḥubāḥib on Acounts about Women.”44 From citations in Jawāmiʿ al-
ladhdha, we know that Burjān and Ḥabāḥib are two elderly women who give
sexual advice and expertise to an anonymous king. The narrative situation is
a majlis, or a private conversation between the king and the two women, ren-
dered in the form of dialogues and monologues in direct speech. The king asks
the women about various topics related to sex, such as women’s shahwa (sexu-
al appetite), what kind of sex women like and which men they prefer. In a long
narrative, they divide women into categories with strange names depending
39 Ibid., 19a-21a.

40 Ibid., 21a-29b. Arguably, her victory owed more to her sexual attractiveness and seductive
skills than to her intellectual arguments.
41 Rosenthal, Male and female, 25.
42 If the above attribution to al-Jāḥiẓ is correct, he apparently has written more than one
work on the subject.
43 Rosentahl, ibid.; Toorawa, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr, 99-101.
44 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, spells the names Bardān and Ḥabāḥib (Fuʾād Sayyid’s vocalization).
In the oldest citations from this story, however, the names are given as Burjān/Barjān/
Barḥān and Ḥabāḥib/Ḥubāḥib (Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha, MSS Aya Sofya 3836); cf. Rowson,
Arabic, 47-48.

on age and shape of genital organs, each of which goes together with a catego-
ry of men. Although this particular narrative is more erotic and entertaining
than instructive, it is clearly inspired by the more serious literature about “per-
fect sex couples” that flourished at the time; ʿAlī b. Naṣr refers to an extensive
technical literature on this topic.
Several of Burjān and Ḥabāḥib’s answers to the king’s questions are humor-
ous, in mujūn style, and they also tell stories about their own sex life, apparent-
ly with the intent to be arousing. Characteristically, the point of most of their
stories is women’s extreme shahwa: “The woman with the weakest shahwa has
more shahwa than the man with the strongest shawha”.45 Women are entirely
driven by their sexual appetite, according to these two advisors; they choose
men based on the size of their genital organs and their performance in bed,
and they love them as long as they receive sexual satisfaction. Some of the
answers are more serious, however, and provide quasi-scientific knowledge or
ethical guidance. They also give more realistic representations of women’s sex-
ual desire and discuss different reasons for sexual dysfunction among women.
The book of Burjān and Ḥabāḥib, as presented in Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha, plays
with the wisdom genre, it is a mirror for princes in mujūn style on the subject
of sex and women. Wisdom in the form of the Arabic testament (waṣiya) had
been popular since long, influenced by the Middle Persian advice literature,
and around the time of al-Mutawakkil’s caliphate more complex works on gov-
erning and kingship were produced.46 One of the earliest full scale mirrors for
princes in Arabic, Kitāb al-Tāj, was written for al-Fatḥ b. Khaqān (d. 247/861-2),
who was al-Mutawakkil’s courtier.47 This work was probably known at court,
which gave credence to the erotic counterpart written by al-Namlī and made
its mocking parts even more amusing. It must have been an attractive format,
as the legacy of Burjān and Ḥabāḥib lived on for centuries and other works
were written in the same style.
The section on erotic literature in the Fihrist contains other stories present-
ed as wisdom literature. There are, for instance, the stories of Bunyānnafs (or
Bunyāfis in the oldest manuscripts) and Bunyāndukht, who figure in Jawāmiʿ
al-ladhdha as well. The woman, Bunyāndukht, gives advice to women on
how to get pleasure, seduce a man, and get the best out of their husbands.
Bunyāfis, the man, bears the epithet al-ḥakīm, “wise,” as if he were a sage or a
philosopher, and presents his sexual wisdom in appropriate short sentences.
Nonetheless, he calls himself a mājin, a joker with an obscene sense of humour
45 Aḍʿaf shahwat al-nisāʾ aghlab min aqwā shahwat al-rijāl; MS Aya Sofya 3836, fol. 103 a.
46 Marlow, Counsel for Kings, 6-7.
47 Ibid., 45-46.

202 Myrne
and he addresses his audience likewise. He is indeed a wise buffoon and his
expertise expands to things like the benefits and disadvantages of pubic hair.
The couple sometimes appears together, then called al-Fārisī and al-Fārisiyya,
experts in physiognomy related to sex.48 Al-Fārisiyya is specialized in men’s
physiognomy and al-Fārisī’s in women’s, showing that women by experience
are knowledgeable about men and men about women. The concept of the
couple with mutual experience plays, however, a minor role in Jawāmiʿ al-lad-
hdha. Al-Fārisī/Bunyāfis is only mentioned a few times, whereas al-Fārisiyya/
Bunyāndukht and other female experts abound, with expertise on women’s
sexuality as well as on men’s desires. The overarching idea in Jawāmiʿ al-ladhda
is thus that women, in the form of female protagonists, represent their own
sex. The focus on women in erotic books is in itself not surprising, considering
the intended reader was a heterosexual man. However, the literary technique
of letting women speak for themselves is striking.
More Books on Women from the Third/Ninth and Fourth/Tenth

Centuries
From Ibn al-Nadīm’s section on erotic literature, we know that several other
books on women and sex have been written at the time but did not survive.
ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. al-Shāh al-Ṭāhirī, a grandson of the military commander
al-Shāh b. Mikāl who died in 302/914-5, wrote Akhbār al-nisāʾ, “Accounts about
Women,” which probably covered erotic aspects, since Ibn al-Nadīm describes
the author as a follower of Abū l-ʿAnbas who wrote on lesbians and passive
sodomites, as we have seen above. Indeed, ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Ṭāhirī also
authored two books about male same-sex desire in a humorous way, Kitāb al-
Bighāʾ wa-ladhdhātihi, “The Book on Passive Sodomy and its Pleasures,” and
Kitāb al-Ghilmān, “The Book on Slave-boys.”49 Another book called Akhbār al-
nisāʾ was written by Ibn Ḥājib al-Nuʿmān (d. 351/962) and seems to have dealt
with female erotica as well. The book was also known as Ḥadīth Ibn al-Dukkānī,
“The Discourse of Ibn al-Dukkānī,” and it apparently survived for centuries, but
is no longer extant. Ibn Ḥājib was an official in charge of the land tax bureau
for Iraq (diwān al-sawād) under the Būyid sultan Muʿizz al-Dawla. He was a
48 Cf. Polemon’s counsel in Firāsat al-nisāʾ: see Ghersetti, A Science for Kings; idem,
Polemon’s Physiognomy.
49 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, I, 471.

contemporary of Ibn al-Nadīm who praises his dignity, virtues, and administra-
tive skills. Ibn Ḥājib also owned one of the best book collections of his time.50
Outside the section on erotic literature, Ibn al-Nadīm lists a number of
other books entitled Akhbār al-nisāʾ or Kitāb al-Nisāʾ, or the like.51 These titles
seem pretentious, promising the reader to provide everything he or she needs
to know about women. Presumably, these books did not cover issues that were
interesting for women in particular; their authors probably wrote for readers
from their own circle of (male) scholars and officials.52 These books may have
belonged to different genres, with different connotations of the word “women.”
Other book titles listed by Ibn al-Nadīm indicate that their subject is women or
issues related to women, or “subgroups” of women. In addition to mutaẓarrifāt,
there are books on jawārī and qiyān, some of which are well-known even today.
Many books have a genealogical or historical focus, for example female lineag-
es (ummahāt) or various categories of wives, such as the wives of the Prophet
(azwāj al-nabī) or wives of noblemen. Other books contain poetry of women
or poetry on women.
Two extant Abbasid “books” with the title Kitāb al-Nisāʾ are mentioned in the
Fihrist, and both are well-known: a short epistle by al-Jāḥiẓ (160/776-255/868)
and the last volume of ʿUyūn al-akhbār of Ibn Qutayba (213/828-276/889).53 Al-
Jāḥiẓ’s epistle, also called Risāla fī l-ʿishq wa-l-nisāʾ, “Of Passion and Women,”
is, according to Charles Pellat, probably an amalgamation of two or three dif-
ferent texts.54 The text as we now have it contains a short discussion of love
and women from an exclusively male perspective. As Nadia Maria El Cheikh
has shown, Ibn Qutayba’s perspective on women is almost exclusively male as
well; he locates women’s behavior and appearance as crucial for the success
of marriages.55 Nevertheless, we can also read women’s voices in this treatise,
albeit fictional, as women’s agency is connected to genre.56 Women are often
50 Ibid., I, 415 and II, 345; see Rowson, Arabic, 48.
51 Obviously, not all of these titles represent a book; many were probably only short written
pieces.
52 There were of course exceptions, i.e., “women prepared for and inducted into the male
environment of the classical language”; Toorawa, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir, 12. Al-Munajjid includes
some titles that he deemed of interest for women, on jewelry, clothes, and finery; Mā ul-
lifa, 315.
53 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, I, 237, 586. For women in the volume by Ibn Qutayba, see El Cheikh,
Ideal Spouse.
54 Pellat, Nouvel essai, 152.
55 El Cheikh, Ideal Spouse.
56 Myrne, Narrative, Gender and Authority, 100-169.

204 Myrne
the active subject and narrators of several of Ibn Qutayba’s anecdotes, which is
seldom the case in normative literary forms such as wisdom literature.
One of Ibn Qutayba’s main informants in his Kitāb al-Nisāʾ is al-Aṣmaʿī (d.
ca. 215/830). According to Ibn al-Nadīm, he wrote numerous books, but none
specifically on women.57 However, Ibn Qutayba quotes a good many other
writers who devoted entire books to the topic of women, as recorded in the
Fihrist, mentioning Hishām b. al-Kalbī, al-Madāʾinī, al-Haytham b. ʿAdī, Isḥāq
al-Mawṣilī and Muḥammad b. ʿUbayd Allāh al-ʿUtbī. Among the first Abbasid
scholars who made “women“ a specific topic for their written works was Khālid
b. Ṭalīq, a historian and qadi in Basra during the caliphate of al-Mahdī. His
work is called al-Muzawwajāt, “Married Women,” a title that is difficult to pin-
point — was it a genealogy of wives of the noblemen, or perhaps a legal treatise
of rulings for women? We know more about Hishām b. al-Kalbī (d. 204/819 or
206/821), a historian from Kufa who wrote more than 150 works, a few of them
entirely devoted to women, and widely cited by later scholars. His historical
and genealogical interests prompted him to write about the female ancestry
of the Prophet (ummahāt al-nabī) and the caliphs (ummahāt al-khulafāʾ), the
wives of the Prophet (azwāj al-nabī) and “the Arabs” (manākiḥ azwāj al-ʿarab).58
The prolific historian al-Madāʾinī (135-215/752-843) was an important source
for reports about women, too, cited by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih in the sections on
women in al-ʿIqd al-farīd, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr, and others. He produced a
number of works specifically on women, some of which treated the mater-
nal ancestors of the Prophet (ummahāt al-nabī), probably with a genealogical
focus, and his wives (azwāj al-nabī).59 A whole section in Fihrist is devoted
to al-Madāʾinī’s books on the wives of noble men, perhaps in the form of ge-
nealogical lists, and narrative reports on women (akhbār manākiḥ al-ashrāf
wa-akhbār al-nisāʾ).60 The section includes titles such as “The Book on Women
Whose Husbands Were Killed” (Kitāb Man qutila ʿanhā zawjuhā), “The Book
on Women Called Fāṭima” (Kitāb al-Fāṭimiyyāt),61 “The Book on Those Who
Were Lampooned by Their Husbands” (Kitāb Man hajāhā zawjuhā), and “The
Book on Women Who Complained to Their Husbands about Their Conduct”
57 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist: 1, 155-157.

58 Ibid., 307, 304.
59 Ibid., 316.
60 Ibid., 318.
61 They are probably the Fawāṭim, Muḥammad’s ancestors with the name Fāṭima, as there
is also a “book” in this section called Kitāb al-ʿAwātik, on Muḥammad’s ancestors named
ʿĀtika; see Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, I, 32-34. These books are probably genealogical lists, which
may be true of several of the titles listed here.

(Kitāb Man shakat zawjahā). Al-Madāʾinī also wrote “Poets’ Contradictions and
Narrative Reports on Women” (Munāqaḍāt al-shuʿarāʾ wa-akhbār al-nisāʾ).62
Altogether, these intriguing titles show a keen interest in historical details and,
notably, women were not treated as one single group, but as numerous sub-
groups just like men were.
One of the first to write a Kitāb al-Nisāʾ, according to Ibn al-Nadīm, was the
early Abbasid historian, al-Haytham b. ʿAdī (d. 207/822).63 His written works
are all lost, but from references and citations in later sources, it is evident that
he wrote narrative reports about female personalities, as well as anecdotes and
humorous stories about named and unnamed women. He was a source to Ibn
Qutayba, Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, and Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr. In some of the anecdotes
he relates from his teacher Ṣāliḥ b. Ḥassān, the main character is Ḥubbā, a
woman with some standing in Medina. Al-Balādhurī and al-Ṭabarī mention
that Ḥubbā’s judgment was respected by Caliph ʿAbd al-Malik; she also conveys
some wisdom.64 In al-Haytham’s accounts, Ḥubba is portrayed as an indepen-
dent woman and given her own voice and agency. However, she is also utterly
libidinous, has sex with dogs, and discusses erotic dreams with her daughters.
It is no wonder then, that she became one of the main female characters in
Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha.
The use of a historical personality belongs to the preferred narrative situ-
ation of the Abbasid anecdote and Ḥubbā’s historical persona has been used
for creating a mujūn character for the amusement of Abbasid readers. Yet,
these anecdotes also sanction a posthumous shaming of a strong, female
personality.65 They can be read as the prejudices of the exclusively male read-
ership of the time.66 It is also possible to read them as part of a type of litera-
ture to be labeled “shameful ancestry,” which seems to have been entertaining
in a sensational way and at the same time used for deriding certain people be-
cause of their low origin and base ancestors. Among titles with this content we
find al-Haytham’s “The Names of the Prostitutes of Quraysh before Islam and
Their Children” (Kitāb Asmāʾ al-baghāyā Quraysh fī l-Jāhiliyya wa-asmāʾ man
62 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, I, 318.

63 Ibid., 311-313; Pellat, Al-Haytham b. ʿAdī; and, especially, Leder, al-Haiṯam ibn Adī.
64 Cf. Leder, Korpus, who considers it possible that the anecdotes about Ḥubbā in Balaghāt
al-nisāʾ are from al-Haytham’s Kitāb al-Nisāʾ (al-Haiṯam ibn Adī, 84). For the representa-
tion of Ḥubbā in these and other early sources, see Myrne, Ḥubbā al-Madīniyya.
65 At least she appears strong when she confronts Caliph ʿAbd al-Malik and the poet Hudha
in the reports by al-Balādhurī and al-Ṭabarī; see Myrne, Ḥubbā.
66 See Malti-Douglas, Women’s Body, 45-47, for Ḥubbā as an adab character, and see
Meisami’s critique in Writing Medieval Women.

206 Myrne
waladna), and “Noble Fornicators” (Kitāb al-Zunā al-ashrāf) by his transmitter,

Ḥafṣ b. ʿUmar al-ʿUmarī (d. 246/860), who himself wrote a Kitāb al-Nisāʾ.67
Concluding Remarks
A poem from a lesbian poet who was referred to in the sources as “from the
mutaẓarrifāt, the ladies,” prompted my interest in the representation of these
two groups of women in Abbasid literature: the mutaẓarrifāt and the saḥḥāqāt.
Who wrote about these women and for what audience? What was these wom-
en’s role in Abbasid society and how did this change over time? What had la-
dies and lesbians in common in this context?
In the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries, there was an extensive litera-
ture on women in Arabic. Most of it, however, is lost and quotations from it are
relatively scarce. We do have the erotic compendium Jawāmiʿ al-ladhda, com-
posed in the late fourth/tenth century, and al-Washshāʾ’s Muwashshā, from
about half a century earlier, and both deal with the subject explicitly contain-
ing many citations from works now lost.
In this article, I have compared representations of ladies and lesbians as
they appear from these two sources and surveyed lists of book-titles referring
to women from the same period. The information gathered suggests that the
picture of the lady-lesbian is complex and flexible. Mutaẓarrifāt and saḥḥāqāt
seem to have constituted distinct social groups with considerable overlap — as
such admired for their refinement on the one hand and placed outside society
on the other, because most of them appeared to have been slaves. Moreover,
mutaẓarrifāt is a name with different connotations in different times and
contexts.
Titles of books now lost suggest that women were the topic of various liter-
ary genres, portraying women or women related issues from different perspec-
tives. Works with titles such as Kitāb al-Nisāʾ or Akhbār al-nisāʾ seem to have
dealt with “women” in line with the genre of the work and the aim of the au-
thor. It also appeared that the few books that are extant were intended for male
readers and most accounts about women were narrated by men. Nevertheless,
citations from lost stories in Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha reveal that female protagonists
were also narrators and in some of the stories women’s voices are heard. And
even if the narrators were fictional, women’s views, experiences, and knowl-
edge were believed to be best presented by women.
Some of the books I have mentioned above continued to be read for cen-
turies, even though they are not extant today. The most well-known author
67 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, 1, 312, 313-314.

is al-Jāḥiẓ, and his Kitāb al-Nisāʾ seems to have survived, at least partially. Al-
Jāḥiẓ is often referred to by authors of sex and marriage manuals, for example
by the late Mamluk scholar al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) in his al-Wishāḥ fī fawāʾid
al-nikāḥ. Al-Jāḥiẓ was apparently considered an authority on women and sex.
Several of the books mentioned are included in the index of manuscripts dat-
ing from 694/1294 that were found by Paul Sbath in Aleppo:68 Azwāj al-nabī
by al-Madāʾinī (n. 82), al-Manākiḥ, also by al-Madāʾinī (n. 847),69 al-Nisāʾ by
al-Haytham b. ʿAdī (n. 879), al-Qiyān by Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī (n. 731),
al-Nisāʾ by al-Jāḥiẓ (n. 880),70 Akhbār al-nisāʾ by Hārūn b. ʿAlī al-Munajjim
(n.19), and Ashʿār al-nisāʾ by al-Marzūbānī (n. 109). Three books that have been
discussed more elaborately in this article are mentioned in Sbath’s index as
well — al-Saḥq by al-Namlī (n. 502) and al-Saḥḥāqāt wa-al-baghghāʾīn by Abū
l-ʿAnbas (n. 501).71 Finally, the book by al-Namlī on the two female erotic ex-
perts Burjān and Ḥabāḥib (n. 192) was also present in the libraries of Aleppo;
this book is mentioned in the Mamluk sex manual Rujūʿ al-shaykh ilā ṣibāh as
well.72 Ḥajjī Khalifa (1017/1609-1067/1657) mentions one title by al-Namlī that
apparently was still available at his time, namely Kitāb al-Bāh, “The Book on
Coitus,” which might well have been his Burjān and Ḥabāḥib. The erotic lore
of the Abbasid Empire continued to arouse interest for centuries, not the least
stories with strong female characters. But there is still much to be done to find
more traces of these stories in later sources.
References
Primary Sources
Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-Aghānī, 24 vols., Cairo: Dār al-Kutub, 1927-1974
Alī b. Naṣr al-Kātib, Abū l-Ḥasan, Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha, MSS Aya Sofya 3836 (533/1139),
3837 (634/ 1236), MS Fatih 3729 (582/1186), MS Chester Beatty ar4635 (724/ 1323)
Ibn al-Nadīm, Muḥammad, Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. by Ayman Fuʾād Sayyid, 2nd edition,
4 vols., London: Al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2014; The Fihrist of
68 The index contains altogether 915 book titles; Sbath, Choix de livres. For books on fe-
male poets, see Hammond, Literature. On the later tradition of books about women, see
Kilpatrick, ʿAbbāsid and Mamlūk Books.
69 Probably the same as akhbār manākiḥ al-ashrāf wa-akhbār al-nisāʾ , see above.
70 Al-Jāḥiẓ’s “book,” as indicated by the preserved epistle, admittedly was more on love than
women in general.
71 The index includes another book on a similar topic written by Abū l-ʿAnbas entitled al-
ʿĀshiq wa-l-maʿshūq (n. 618).
72 For the dating of this book, see Rowson, Arabic, 56-57.

208 Myrne
al-Nadīm, edited and translated by Bayard Dodge, 2 vols., New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1888-1972
Ibn Qutayba, Abdallāh b. Muslim, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, 4 vols., Cairo: Dār al-Kutub, 1930
Ibn Saʿd, Muḥammad, Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr, ed. by Eduard Sachau et al., 9 vols.,
Leiden: Brill, 1904-1940
Al-Jāḥiẓ, Abū ʿUthmān b. Baḥr. Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiẓ, ed. by ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad
Hārūn, 3 vols., Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1399/1979
Al-Washshāʾ, Abū Ṭayyib Muḥammad b. Isḥāq, Kitāb al-Muwashshā, ed. by Rudolphe
Brünnow, Leiden: Brill, 1886
Secondary Sources
El Cheikh, Nadia Maria, In Search for the Ideal Spouse in: Journal of the Economic and
Social History of the Orient 45/2 (2002), 179-196
Fleischhammer, Manfred, Die Quellen des Kitāb al-Aġānī, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
2004
Ghazi, Muhammed Ferid, La littérature d’imagination en arabe du IIe/VIIIe au Ve/XIe
siècles, in: Arabica 4/2 (1957), 164-78
Ghazi, Muhammed Ferid, Un groupe social: “Les Raffinés” (Ẓurafā’), in: Studia Islamica
11 (1959), 39-71
Ghersetti, Antonella, Polemon’s Physiognomy in the Arabic Tradition, in: Simon Swain
(ed.), Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiq-
uity to Medieval Islam, Oxford University Press, 2007, 309-327
Ghersetti, Antonella, A Science for Kings and Masters: Firāsa at the Crossroad between
Natural Sciences and Power Relationships, in: Eva Orthmann and Nader El-Bizri
(eds.), The Occult Sciences in Pre-modern Islamic Cultures, Orient Institute Beirut,
forthcoming
Hammond, Marlé, Literature, 9th to 15th Century, in: Suad Joseph (ed.), Encyclopedia
of Women and Islamic Cultures Volume 1: Methodologies, Paradigms and Sources,
Leiden: Brill, 2003, 42-50
Kilpatrick, Hilary, Some Late ʿAbbāsid and Mamlūk Books about Women: A Literary
Historical Approach, in: Arabica 42/ 1 (1995), 56-78
Kilpatrick, Hilary, Making the Great Book of Songs: Compilation and Author’s Craft in
Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī’s Kitāb al-Aghānī, London and New York: Routledge Curzon,
2003
Kilpatrick, Hilary, review of Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Woman’s Body Woman’s Word:
Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing, in: Bibliotheca Orientalis 53 (1996),
566-570
Leder, Stefan, Das Korpus al-Haiṯam ibn Adī (st. 207/822): Herfkunft, Überlieferung,
Gestalt früher Texte der Aḫbār Literatur, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1991

Marlow, Louise, Counsel for Kings: Wisdom and Politics in Tenth-Century Iran, vol. 2,
The Naṣīḥat al-mulūk of Pseudo-Māwardī: Texts, Sources and Authorities, Edinburgh:
Edinburg University Press, 2016
Malti-Douglas, Fedwa, Woman’s Body Woman’s Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-
Islamic Writing, Cairo: Princeton University Press, 1991
Meisami, Julie Scott, Writing Medieval Women: Representations and Misrepresenta-
tions, in: Julia Bray (ed.), Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam: Muslim Hori-
zons, London and New York: Routledge, 2006
Montgomery, James, Ẓarīf, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, 13 vols., Leiden:
Brill, 1954-2005, XI, 460
Al-Munajjid, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, Mā ullifa ʿan al-nisāʾ, in: Majallat Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿArabī 16
(1941), 212-219
Myrne, Pernilla, Narrative, Gender and Authority in ʿAbbāsid Literature on Women,
Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2010
Myrne, Pernilla, Who Was Hubba al-Madiniyya? in: Lutz Edzard (ed.), Arabic and
Semitic Linguistics Contextualized: A Festschrift for Jan Retsö, Wiesbaden: Harras-
sowitz, 2015, 328-344
Myrne, Pernilla, Pleasing the Beloved: Sex and True Love in a Medieval Arabic Erotic
Compendium, in: Michael Beard, Alireza Korangy and Hanadi al-Samman (eds.),
Beloved: Love and Languishing in Middle Eastern Literatures, London: I.B. Tauris,
2017, 215-236
Pellat, Charles, Abu ’l-ʿAnbas al-Ṣaymarī, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition,
13 vols., Leiden: Brill, 1954-2005, S., 16-17
Pellat, Charles, Al-Haytham b. ʿAdī, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, 13 vols.,
Leiden: Brill, 1954-2005, III, 328
Pellat, Charles, Nouvel essai d’inventaire de l’oeuvre Gahizienne, in: Arabica 31/
2 (1984), 117
Raven, Wim, al-Washshāʾ, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, 13 vols., Leiden:
Brill, 1954-2005, XI, 160-161
Rosenthal, Franz, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition,
13 vols., Leiden: Brill, 1954-2005, III, 692-693
Rosenthal, Franz, Male and Female: Described and Compared, in: J. W. Wright Jr. and
Everett K. Rowson (eds.), Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1997, 24-54
Rowson, Everett, The Categorization of Gender and Sexual Irregularity in Medieval
Arabic Vice Lists, in Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (eds.), Body Guards: The Cul-
tural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, New York and London: Routledge, 1991
Rowson, Everett, Arabic: Middle Ages to Nineteenth Century, in: Gaétan Brulotte and
John Phillips (eds.), Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature, 2 vols., New York: Routledge,
2006, I, 43-61

210 Myrne
Sbath, Paul, Choix de livres qui se trouvaient dans les bibliothèques d’Alep (au XIIIe
siècle), in: Mémoires présentés à l’Institut d’Égypte 49, 1946
Sellheim, Rudolf, Al-Marzubānī, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, 13 vols.,
Leiden: Brill, 1954-2005, VI, 634-635
Toorawa, Shawkat, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr: A Ninth Century Bookman in Baghdad, New
York: Routledge, 2005

Of Ladies and Lesbians and Books On Women From The Third/Ninth and Fourth/Tenth Centuries

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Of Ladies and Lesbians and Books On Women From The Third/Ninth and Fourth/Tenth Centuries

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Of Ladies and Lesbians and Books On Women From The Third/Ninth and Fourth/Tenth Centuries

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Journal of Abbasid Studies 4 (2017) 187-210