ThE gENdEriNg of «dEATh» iN KiTāb Al-‘iQd Al-fArīd* EL GÉNERO DE LA «MUERTE» EN EL KITĀB AL-,IQD AL-FARīD nadia

* I presented earlier versions of this paper at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania in 2007 at the invitations of Steven Caton and Jamal Elias respectively. I greatly benefited from Shawkat Toorawas comments on a draft of this paper as well as from the comments of the anonymous readers. This article studies a subsection of the adab compilation of ibn ‘Abd rabbih’s, al-‘iqd al-farīd, namely “The book of lamentations, Condolences, and Elegies”. The article analyzes al-‘iqd’s ideological function, specifically, the way gender is organized through the occasion of death. it locates what seems to be «repressed» in the text attempting to determine what material was ignored, buried, end edited, and how priorities were arranged. it is the contention of this article that al-‘iqd, as an exemplary text, not only reflects a dominant ideology, but contributes towards the dominant discourse by shaping mental and social life.


Women's roles in «death»
A subsection in the fourth/tenth century adab anthology al-‛iqd al-farīd (the unique Necklace) entitled "Concerning the love of children", includes an anecdote in praise of girls: ‛Amr b. al-,ās al-QanÐara (AQ) XXXI 2, julio-diciembre 2010, pp.411-436 ISSN 0211-3589 visited mu‛āwiya who was with his daughter ‛ā'isha.«he asked: who is she, Commander of the Faithful?» he answered: «this is the apple of my eye.‛Amr said: turn away from her, for by god, they beget enemies, welcome your opponents and bequeath hatred.mu‛āwiya said: do not say such things, O ‛Amr, for by god, it is women who nurse the sick, lament the dead and relieve sadness». 1in this anecdote, women's role in lamenting the dead is brought to the fore.Women mourn the dead, providing relief and sustaining the memory of the deceased.
it has been argued that the gendered division of labor extends into the sphere of emotions so that in many societies, the greater grief expressed by women suggests not just that they feel more, but that they are required to mourn on behalf of men, ritually express-ing men's grief as well as their own.«The custom of mourning presses far more heavily on women than on men […] they (men) positively manage to mourn by proxy […]». 2 Women's particular role in death is similarly underlined in the following anecdote in the compilation of the philologist al-mubarrad (d.286/900) where the main protagonist, a woman who has eight brothers, is warned that she will have to play the quintessential role of mourning: My mother told me: An old woman called Bādiya visited us.The saddles of my eight brothers were next to the house.She asked: To whom do these sad-dles belong?Do you have guests tonight?I said: these are the saddles of my brothers.She said: By giving birth to your eight brothers, your mother left you with a long strand of mourning.[My mother said]: and yes, Bādiya was right for I cried my soul piecemeal over them. 3at responses to death were gendered in islam is reflected in ihdād, mourning practices allowable for, or incumbent upon women (only); niyāha (lamentation), and marāthī (poetic elegies).The law of mourning is based primarily on the following hadīth: «it is not permitted for a woman who believes in god and the last day to be in mourning more than three days except for her husband, whom she mourns for four months and ten days».ibn al-Jawzī explains ihdād as refraining from adornment, and generally from anything that may lead to sexual intercourse such as wearing jewelry, the use of perfumes, dye, henna, black kohl, colored cloths such as red, yel-low, green and blue. 4islam assigned a place to the feminine ele-ment in the management of mourning; at the same time it tried to contain it.
Women were also heavily implicated in niyāha, lamentation, which was primarily a female occupation. in his medieval dictionary, ibn manzýr describes al-nawā'ih as the women who gather in a manāha, a gathering of women for the express purpose of grieving.in this dictionary niyāha is a specifically female activity.it is signifi-cant to point, however, that the most important hadīth compilations include traditions which condemn crying over the dead and extrava-gant shows of grief.The practice of niyāha was considered to be a legacy of paganism.both the Musnad and the Sahīh include a tradi-tion that states that «bewailing torments the dead in his tomb».5 in Abū dāwūd one tradition states that god's curse is on the nā'iha and the listener, al-mustami'a (in the feminine form). 6Two concerns preoccupied traditionists and jurisprudents: «the ideal ritual order» and «the role of women in society».Nevertheless, wailers continued their practice and the «muslim tradition came to represent the rite of wailing not as a custom transformed or eradicated by islam but as a pre-islamic institution that had persisted stubbornly despite islam». 7omen's role in death is similarly underlined in poetic elegies.The poetic genre of marāthī/elegies subsumes the overwhelming ma-jority of women's compositions preserved in the classical canon of Arabic literary heritage. 8The rithā' was in pre-islamic Arabia re-al-QanÐara (AQ) XXXI 2, julio-diciembre 2010, pp.411-436 ISSN 0211-3589 served for warriors killed in battle.Often composed by women, these poems immortalized the fallen hero, calling for vengeance as an act of purification to cleanse the tribe of disgrace and revitalize its kin by shedding enemy blood.Of the seventy known j×hilī poetesses, the vast majority wrote elegiac verse for those slain in battle. 9Accord-ing to Suzanne Stetkevych, women's restricted poetic domains re-flects «the limited occasions upon which "free" women of the war-rior class were allowed or required a public voice: the niyāha, lament for their adult menfolk, and tahrīd, inciting their menfolk to bat-tle». 10Arabic poetry changed considerably after the rise of islam, however, to reflect islamic and individualistic interests.
indeed, lamenting and grieving loss share an uneasy relationship with islamic piety.Strong emotional reaction to death was con-demned from the religious point of view since it implied a skeptical attitude toward the divine promise of eternal life and a preference for earthly values. 11instead, a muslim's reaction to death should reflect steadfastness, sabr, and contentment with the divine decree.This change of conception was visible in the elegies of the early is-lamic period.reassurance for the fate of the eulogized and accept-ance of god's decree took the place of anguish (jaza') and wails (walwala). 12n what follows i wish to analyze a subsection of the adab com-pilation of ibn ‛Abd rabbih's (d.328/940), al-‛iqd al-farīd, namely The Kitāb al-durra fī l-nawādib wa-l-ta‛āzī wa-l-marāthī, "the book According to A. Jones, there were many women who turned to poetry to express their feelings at the death of a loved one although they had never ventured to try to compose poetry before, (Jones, A., Early Arabic Poetry, Oxford, 1992-6, I, 51).
10 Stetkevych, S.P., "The Generous Eye/I and the Poetics of Redemption.An Elegy by al-Fāri'ah b.Shaddād al-Murriyah", in Literary Heritage of Classical Islam: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of James Bellamy, M. Mir (ed.), Princeton, 1993, 85-105.In a footnote, Stetkevych suggests that the attribution of rithā' and tahrīd to women may be a literary conceit, much of it having been composed by men.
11 This is also reflected in the Christian position which upholds that a true Christian's grief should be measured and moderate.See Groeneveld, L., "Mourning, Heresy and Resurrection in the York Corpus Christi Cycle", Response to Death, the Literary Work of Mourning, C. Riegel (ed.), Edmonton, 2005, 1-21.
12 Al-Ni‛ma, M., al-Marāthī al-shi‛riyya fī sadr al-islām, Beirut, 1997, 30.See also Welch, A.T., "Death and Dying in the Qur'an", in Religious Encounters with Death, F.E. Reynolds and E.H. Waugh (eds.),London, 1973, 183-199.  of lamentations, Condolences, and Elegies" (henceforth Kitāb aldurra).i am interested in al-‛iqd's ideological function, specifically, the way gender is organized and represented in Kitāb al-durra.Texts such as al-‛iqd frame paradigms which assist in defining values.Studying al-‛iqd helps trace attitudes towards gender through the occasion of death and more specifically maps out some of the strat-egies that this text employs to signify gender difference and gender relations.highlighting mourning and lamentation as one of the few places where women acquire a voice in the sources is one of the main aims of this article. 13l-‛iqd is one of several anthologies to include a substantial sec-tion on lamentation, condolences and elegies.Other adab texts in-corporate such portions, most notably, al-mubarrad's Kitāb al-ta‛āzī wa-l-marāthī.A comparative approach between these texts would undoubtedly be most enriching in bringing in the widest possible material in circulation in this genre.however, in this article the fo-cus is on al-‛iqd, first, in order to bring out its richness and the many possible angles one can approach such texts; second, so that one may see the ways one compilation uses and re-uses material.The omissions and inclusions, the forms, connotations and silences of the text, can be used to discover how experience was formulated and how priorities were arranged.i approach this text with an eye to its participation in the period's gendered culture of grief asking the following questions: What sort of thinking does the text want to produce in order to establish or maintain certain authorities and structures?What possibilities of thinking are excluded from this text?What does it keep from sight? how are the teachings of islam on the nature and ways of grieving reflected in Kitāb al-durra?And how is this material gendered given the religious and cultural re-straints that surrounded the emotional work around death, be it grieving, lamenting, or the reciting of elegies?14 13 Lila Abu Lughod has pointed that while lamentation and mourning by women is common in the Muslim world, the genre has received scarce attention both in medieval and modern studies, (Abu Lughod, L., "Islam and the Gendered Discourses of Death", IJMES, 25 (1993), 187-205.14  Al-‛Iqd al-Farīd al-‛iqd al-farīd is a comprehensive adab work. in the words of one scholar, it is «perhaps the best compendium of adab ever writ-ten»; 15 another scholar talks about it as a «quasi-canonical» compi-lation.16 Although the composer/compiler was born in Cordova, the anthology is based on Eastern sources, notably, the works of ibn al-muqaffa‛, al-Jāhiz, ibn Qutayba, al-mubarrad, and others.indeed, this encyclopedia contains practically no tradition of Andalusian or-igin.17As El-Eryan notes, the 'iqd does not respond to a concrete epoch or geographical zone, but is tributary of oriental motifs.18ibn ‛Abd rabbih informs his readers that «these are entertaining stories, pieces of wisdom and anecdotes…»19 that relate to a whole variety of subjects.This famous anthology, like other similar adab works, purports to include the «best» of what had been said in the form of verse, prose, aphorism and anecdotes on every conceivable subject which an educated man, an adīb was expected to know.like similar adab anthologies, it is an intertextually rich anecdotal litera-ture, designed to be didactic and entertaining.20 Organized into books and chapters, the material deals with a wide range of problems of language, literature, and ethical and prac-tical behavior.For each subject, the compiler collected a number of anecdotes and extracts of poetry or proverbs encompassing basic cultural knowledge.ibn ‛Abd rabbih ordered his 25 chapters by theme, and within each, placed the selected passages in «a descend-ing epistemological hierarchy of Koranic verses, traditions, philoso-phers' sayings, historical akhbār, and poetic quotes…»21 ibn ‛Abd rabbih chose what to include, with great care, selecting elements out of accounts, models and traditions.
adab texts have generally been presented as a written recon-struction of a pre-existing oral construct.moreover, this literature is seen as a literature of repetition and compilation, one that lacks originality and where the personality, inventiveness and subjectivity of the author are absent.While it is true that adab attempts to re-construct values, the originality of a particular text exists precisely in the choice of the reproduced passages, in their arrangement, their nuanced re-writing and in the new contexts where they are insert-ed. 22Composed mostly of reported discourse, the artistic responsi-bility of the author/compiler centers on the selection, presentation, and arrangement of the material. 23The act of compiling was itself an act of composition, which while disclaiming originality, never-theless bears the mark of the compiler's shaping hand. 24ibn ‛Abd rabbih operated with a set of religious, theological and philosophi-cal assumptions and a literary tradition from which he drew his un-derstanding and which directed his inquiry and molded his views.he selected and/or summarized anecdotes, maxims, proverbs and verses that relate to a whole variety of subjects.This was no easy task as he himself submits that «selecting the texts is more difficult al-QanÐara (AQ) XXXI 2, julio-diciembre 2010, pp.411-436 ISSN 0211-3589 than composing them».25 he does not include chains of authorities, thus transforming the texts into timeless sayings suitable for usage in different contexts and circumstances.26

Kitāb al-durra fi l-nawādib wa-l-ta‛āzī wa-l-marāthī
This article uses the edition of the ‛iqd by Amīn, al-Zayn and al-Abyārī.Kitāb al-durra is included in volume three (pages 228 to 311). it runs into two major sections as follows: The introductory paragraph of Kitāb al-durra delineates the task at hand: the compiler wishes to include the most eloquent utterances concerning lamentations, poetic elegies, and consolations. 27in this passage, mourning death appears to be a specifically female occupa--tion as ibn ‛Abd rabbih mentions two main types of female mourn-ers (nawādib): One (nādiba) is able to instill sadness and to provoke strong emotions.The effect is heart rending.The other type is the one who muffles her sobs calling for patience and resignation.he goes on to distinguish between a truly bereaved person and a hired nā'iha (professional mourner).This is underlined in an anecdote in-volving ‛umar b. al-dharr who asked his father: «What is it with people that whenever you preach they cry, and when others preach they don't cry?»The father answered: «the bereaved nā'iha is not like the hired nā'iha». 28he subsections i.2, i.4, i.6 are dotted with female figures by the deathbeds of the dying, crying over the dead, standing by their graves, and praising them.The presence of women in subsec-tion i.2 on «last words» is connected to their presence in intimate proximity to the event of death and it is that proximity which partly explains their presence in this and other sections of Kitāb al-durra.This subsection includes an anecdote about Fātima, daughter of the Prophet muhammad, by her dying father.‛ā'isha, wife of the Proph-et, reports that Fātima visited her dying father who whispered to her, so she cried; he whispered to her again, and she laughed; so I [‛Ā'isha] said to myself : I used to think that Fātima has precedence over women but she revealed herself to be one of them, since she cries while she laughs.When the Prophet died I asked her [about her behavior] and she an-swered: He whispered to me that he is dying, so I cried; and then he whispered to me that I am the first of his house to follow him, and so I laughed. 29is anecdote is immediately followed by two anecdotes which involve ‛ā'isha and her dying father, Caliph Abū bakr.She hears his last words and last wishes. 30These women's proximity to the dying allowed them to communicate the dying men's last words, af-fording these women a measure of power as the holders of private information which they could disclose in ways that may have im-portant effects on the family and the community.Women could also manipulate the information about the gravity of the dying man's condition.The most famous islamic example is precisely that of ‛ā'isha, in whose room the Prophet chose to spend his last hours. 28Ibid., III, 228. 29Ibid., III, 231. 30 The political implications of her proximity to the dying Prophet has been noted as having had bearings on the matter of succession, and more specifically on the nomination of her father Abū bakr as the first caliph. 31ubsection i.4 entitled "Crying over the dead" includes three tra-ditions relating to the Prophet muhammad.in the first tradition, he is seen crying over his dead son ibrāhīm and is asked about his cry-ing.The prophet answered: «The eyes become tearful and the heart is saddened but we say only what is agreeable to god». 32The next tradition has the Companion 'umar b. al-Khattāb rebuking women of the Ansār for crying over a dead man.The Prophet told him: «leave them O, 'umar, the soul is stricken and the eye is tearful, and the fulfillment of the promise is close at hand». 33The last tra-dition in this series takes place following the battle of uhud, when the Prophet heard the sound of weeping and wailing over the dead.The Prophet said: «but there are no women weeping for hamza![…] The people of madīna heard that and from then on, no funeral ceremony took place which did not begin with the women weeping for hamza». 34The inherent tension between the need to mourn and lament the dead, on the one hand, and the proper islamic attitude towards death, on the other, is reflected in these traditions.The Prophet makes a distinction between weeping and lamenting, bukā' and niyāha.grief and sorrow for the loss of a relative can be ex-pressed as the Prophet himself did when his son ibrāhīm died.The early Musnad of Abū dawūd includes the following tradition which distinguishes between niyāha and bukā': «he [the Prophet] permit-ted singing during weddings and also weeping (bukā') over the dead without lamenting (niyāha)». 35n either case, whether lamenting or weeping, it is women who are in charge of performing the acts of grief.mourning is mostly women's work and female lamentation a group activity in which a community of women join together to mourn.As such, it is a dis-cursive community whose characteristic ways of mourning are spe-cific to the sex of its members and to their task.36 by inserting these traditions in Kitāb al-durra, the text was fulfilling an instruc-tive function about who and how was one to mourn for the dead.The material warns of the dangers of excessive grief and of the im-portance of learning and applying the proper ways of carrying out the work of mourning.The work of mourning is, indeed, connected with the proper expression and understanding of faith.Subsection i.6 entitled "Standing by the graves and praising the deceased" is a relatively long section.The second anecdote refers to Fātima standing by the grave of her father the Prophet and uttering the following verses: «Our loss is like the earth's loss of its rain; since you left we have been deprived of revelation and books».37 The real loss was the loss of revelation.The pious muslim had noth-ing to fear from death.Without wishing for it, it was his or her duty to accept death with serenity as a prelude to a new life.38 Fātima is said to have asked Anas b. mālik after the burial of the Prophet: How did you have it in you to throw sand over the face of the messenger of God!She then cried and called out: Oh father, he answered his Lord's call!Oh father, how close to his Lord he is!Of father, he is one whose Lord called him!Oh father, to Gabriel, we bewail him!Oh father, paradise is his abode!Then she fell silent. 39is section also includes a reference to the wife of the Proph-et's grandson, hasan b. ‛Alī who pitched a tent by the grave of her husband and stayed on for a while. 40Another anecdote concerns 36 Phillippy, P., "Introduction", Women, Death and Literature in Post-Reformation England, Cambridge, 2002, 15. 37 Ibn ‛Abd Rabbih, al-'Iqd, III, 238. 38Abdesselem, M., Le thème de la mort dans la poésie arabe des origines à la fin du IIIème/IXème siècle, Tunis, 1977, 164.This was emphasized also by Asmā' bint ‛Umays who stated: «We are neither crying over the Messenger of God nor are we shrieking over him but for the termination of revelation» (al-Mubarrad, al-Ta‛āzī, 10). 39Ibn ‛Abd Rabbih, al-'Iqd, III, 238. 40It seems to have been customary in pre-Islamic and very early Islamic era to erect a tent over the grave and spend some time there to show how difficult the leave-taking from al-QanÐara (AQ) XXXI 2, julio-diciembre 2010, pp.411-436 ISSN 0211-3589 Nā'ila, wife of caliph ‛uthmān b. ‛Affān.Fearing that her sorrow would fade away, Nā'ila broke her jaw in order to prevent herself from marrying another. 41This subsection also includes an anecdote about two unnamed women by the grave of their respective fathers and another woman by the grave of her son. 42n exception contained in this section are two verses that ‛Alī b.Abī Tālib recited by the grave of his wife Fātima.This is a unique occurrence in Kitāb al-durra as it constitutes the only occasion where a man is elegizing his wife, as will be discussed further be-low.Of course, the elegized wife is none other than Fātima, daugh-ter of the Prophet.but it is worth noting that of the other women attached to the sacred history of islam, Fātima is the only one who benefits from any elegiac verses in Kitāb al-durra.Subsections i.3 and i.5 entitled respectively "Apprehension at the moment of death" and "utterances by the grave" do not in-clude any anecdotes featuring women.These are very short sections and the material includes men only, both as speakers and as subjects of mourning.does this mean that men and women performed dif-ferent roles in grief and mourning rituals?The other sections all in-clude several anecdotes featuring women, both as speakers and/or as subjects, in addition to ample material featuring men in the same capacities.it is especially significant that subsection i.4 entitled "Crying over the dead" includes more anecdotes featuring women than men.The fact that women outnumber men in this particular section highlights crying for the dead as a female occupation.Since jurisprudents deemed wailing offensive as it comprised an act of complaining against the judgment of god and rebelling against his decree, where does this gender specific activity place women? 43the dead was for the survivors.Goldziher, I., "On the Veneration of the Dead in Pagan-ism and Islam", Muslim Studies, S.M. Stern (ed.), New Brunswick, 2006, 209-238. 41Ibn ‛Abd Rabbih, al-'Iqd, III, 241-2. 42Ibid., III, 242-3. 43Halevi, L., Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society, New York, 2007, 114-142.

marāthī
The longest subsection in Kitāb al-durra is that on marāthī.here, ibn ‛Abd rabbih includes specimen of poetry in a descending order in terms of the deceased importance and consequence, starting with sons, and almost ending with daughters.This subsection on marāthī contains a relatively large number of elegiac verses by women.indeed, medieval scholars identified rithā' as the principal domain for female poetic expression.There appears to have been a general belief that the marāthī of women poets displayed more in-tense feelings than those of their male counterparts.For the critic ibn rāshiq (d.465/1064) women suffer painful emotions so much more quickly than men that they are «the most feeling creatures when tragedy strikes, in all matters of the heart;» and this is a good thing in literature because elegies are «only composed on the basis of deeply felt pain». 44Another argument why rithā' dominates women's poetic experience in the jāhiliyya «explains the association as a discursive reflection of a social division of labor;» yet another suggestion is that women composed elegies because elsewhere they were silenced. 45he sīra of ibn hishām confirms women's primary role in com-posing elegies in a story related about 'Abd al-muttalib -the pater-nal grandfather of the Prophet.Knowing that death was at hand, he summoned his six daughters and asked them to «compose elegies over me so that i may hear, prior to my death, what you are going to say». 46in the chapter on condolences and consolation in his Kitāb al-ta‛āzi wa-l-marāthī, al-mubarrad declares his intention to select the gems of the marāthī poetry and begins his selection with verses composed by layla al-Akhyaliyya, to her beloved Tawba b. al-humayyir.layla transgressed poetical forms by mourning her lover, killed during one of his raids, in a number of elegies.her transgression of composing love poetry in the guise of elegy reflects 44  the possibilities that the elegy could give women a subversive voice through which to evoke a whole range of feelings, authorizing and empowering women's speech. 47n her reading of female elegies in early modern Europe, dan-ielle Clark has pointed out that the recalling of a loved one, espe-cially a son or a brother, «could provide an occasion for the female speaker to suggest her own agency.»however, because of its intrin-sic formal and public nature, the elegy cannot be read as inscribing the «personal» feeling of a given person towards another, but rather reflects more complex perceptions of social and ideological roles.indeed it is necessary to acknowledge the adherence to conventions found in such writing.48 Kitāb al-durra's section on marāthī includes many verses recited by women lamenting brothers, sons, and husbands.The women ex-press their sorrow in words, praising the deceased, but most often focusing on the intolerability of separation.The grief of some is ex-cessive as in the case of a woman from hudhayl, who, having expe-rienced at a young age the loss of her brothers and uncles in a plague, could not bear the death of her son, and died of grief.Another wom-an of the banū Shaybān lost her son, father, husband, mother, pater-nal aunt and maternal aunt.The authenticity of her grief was such that she never again smiled or laughed.49 A significant number of the poems included in al-‛iqd's chapter are marāthī lamenting lost sons.The section starts with a large number of verses (forty-seven) by ibn ‛Abd rabbih himself lament-ing the passing away of one of his sons.50 Of the 28 authors of verses in this section, six are women, unnamed in every instance and referred to either as an a‛rābiyya (a bedouin woman), or, as «a woman belonging to the tribe so and so…» The only named woman is the Abbasid queen-mother Zubayda, who upon the death of her son, Caliph al-Amīn, at the hands of his half-brother, al-ma'mūn, asked the poet Abū l-‛Atāhiya to compose verses on her behalf for al-ma'mūn.51 The verses voiced by women express the agony of separation, such as in the following lines by a mother upon the loss of her son: […] Wish your mother never conceived and never gave birth When I saw you inserted into the shroud […] I realized that after you I am not staying And how can a forearm that has been severed from the upper arm remain! 52m.Abdesselem has pointed that the lamenting verses pertaining to sons have a lyrical tonality that distinctly marks them off from the rest of the lamentations, the loss of a son being more deeply felt than any other loss. 53hile a very large number of elegiac verses, voiced by both fa-thers and mothers, lament sons, the subsection entitled "lament of one's daughter" includes only one poem by the celebrated Abbasid poet al-buhturī concerning the deceased daughter of a member of the banū humayd.Far from being a eulogy, al-buhturī's verses reject grieving over women because they are not useful in war. he quotes the verse of the Qur'ān: «Wealth and sons are the adornment of the present world», 54 and stresses that girls are hence excluded from providing any adornment to this life.Al-buhturī reminds the father of the deceased that it was Eve who was responsible for the downfall of Adam. he goes on to deride the lamenting of daughters: «upon my life!weakness is nothing but men crying over women». 55As Shawqī dayf has remarked, this poem's object does not seem to have been one of condolence as much as hijā' (satire) against women. 56al-QanÐara (AQ) XXXI 2, julio-diciembre 2010, pp.411-436 ISSN 0211-3589 The rare appearance of daughters in classical and medieval Ara-bic poetry has to do with daughters being the bearers of a family's honor and shame.The idea of death as the only honorable fate for a woman is a time-honored theme in Arabic poetry.57indeed, the concept of women as the fragile repositories of family honor under-lies many elegies in which the grieving father consoles himself with the thought that the death of his daughter has put an end to a deli-cate problem.ish×q b.Khalaf, a third ninth century Abbasid poet, recited a morose poem concerning his niece's uncertain fate. in or-der to spare her pain and disgrace, the poet longs for the young girl's death. 58he subsection entitled "lament of one's brother" includes verses by three women, al-Khansā', Qutayla, and layla bint Tarīf.A rela-tively large number of verses, thirst-six, are by al-Khansā', the most famous of all the lamenting poets, and the best known female poet in all of the classical Arabic poetic tradition. 59This perhaps re-flects the fact that some of the most important poetry in the genre of rithā' was composed by sisters on behalf of their fallen brothers.indeed, it was upon the death in battle of her two brothers that al-Khansā's poetic potentialities burst forth in a never-ending strain of lament.her hero, her obsession, was her brother Sakhr. 60his subsection in Kitāb al-durra includes post-conversion sto-ries that reflect the embarrassment of al-Khansā's newly converted kinsmen to her continued mourning, both in the guise of elegies as well as in her wearing of the pre-islamic mourning garb.ibn ‛Abd rabbih includes an anecdote in which al-Khansā' revealed the rea-son of her deep grief to ‛ā'isha, wife of the Prophet, when she asked her about the hair shirt she was wearing: «What is this Khansā'?The Prophet, may god's mercy be upon him, died and i did not wear it for him!»Al-Khansā' answered by relating the un-grudging support that Sakhr had provided her in all moments of distress in her life.Three times she approached him in dire need and he gave her half of his wealth.When she came a fourth time, his wife tried to persuade Sakhr not to give her anything but he re-jected this counsel reciting: «Were death to destroy me, i am sure she would tear off her head-gear and put on a camel-hair bod-ice». 61Another anecdote has ‛umar b. al-Khattāb remind al-Khansā' that the brothers she is mourning and for whom she is composing elegies are in hell since they died before islam.her an-swer was that this is all the more reason for her distress.These stories provide substantiation for the disapproval in which pre-is-lamic mourning institutions were held after the rise of islam.how-ever, at the same time, these anecdotes emphasize al-Khansā's strength of will in maintaining her mourning and expressions of grief, even in the face of societal disapproval.Clarissa burt has pointed, moreover, that through elegies, al-Khansā' managed to in-corporate social messages, employing the genre to chastise those who forgot the needs of widows, calling the community to respon-sibility, boasting of the bravery of her family, invoking vengeance, or accepting fate. 62his section also includes verses by Qutayla elegizing her broth-er [sic] al-Nadr, who was killed by the Prophet muhammad.This is one of the most frequently cited poems in the hamāsāt, 63 antholo-gies, and histories.When the Prophet heard Qutayla's verses, he is said to have stated that he would have exonerated al-Nadr had he heard them before. 64Qutayla's poem reflects the new islamic ethos conveying the dramatic tension of a particular moment in islamic religious history.She does not call for vengeance but for a modifi-cation of behavior, a kind retroactive display of restraint and for-bearance. 6561 Ibn ‛Abd Rabbih, al-'Iqd, III, 266-267. 62Burt, "al-Khansā'". 63A hamāsa is a poetic anthology consisting of brief extracts selected for their liter-ary value and classified in a specific order according to theme or genre. 64Ibn ‛Abd Rabbih, al-'Iqd, III, 265.Ibn 'Abd Rabbih wrongly identifies al-Nadr as the brother of Qutayla, rather than her father. 65Hammond, The Poetics of S/Exclusion, 185-6.
al-QanÐara (AQ) XXXI 2, julio-diciembre 2010, pp.411-436 ISSN 0211-3589 The last female composer of verses in this section is layla bint Tarīf. in a widely celebrated poem, she elegizes her brother Walīd b.Tarīf, a prominent Kharijite whose assassination was ordered by Caliph hārūn al-rashīd.layla's verses talk about his generosity, grace, and strength: «his loss is the loss of spring -if only we had ransomed him with thousands of our best men». 66erses from brothers on behalf of their deceased sisters are a very rare occurrence; and in any event, Kitāb al-durra does not in-clude a section entitled "lament of one's sister."The following sec-tion entitled "lament of one's husband" includes Asmā' bint Abī bakr's elegy of her husband al-Zubayr, who was killed in connec-tion with the battle of the Camel; and lubāna bint ‛Alī's elegy to her husband the Abbasid caliph al-Amīn.The section also includes an anecdote reported by the philologist al-A½ma‛ī (d.213/828) who saw in the bedouin cemetery a woman wearing her jewelry and em-bellishments and crying her heart out.Asked about the discrepancy between her pain and her attire, she answered in verses expressing her wish to visit her deceased husband, showing herself up in the ways that were familiar to him. 67he subsequent section is not, as one would expect, "lament of one's wife," but rather "lament of one's jāriya."All of the verses, are, naturally, composed by men.The section opens with mu‛alla al-Tā'÷ and his slave-girl Wasf who is described as an adība and poet.When mu'alla sold her for four thousand dinār, she told him: «if i owned of you what you own of me, i would not have sold you for the world.» he returned the money but she died eight days later and he elegized her in a long poem. 68This section also includes verses by the great poets Abū Nuwās and Abū Tammām for their respective slave-girls, and by mahmūd al-Warrāq for his slave-girl Nashū. 69The disappearance of free women from poems and their 66 Ibn ‛Abd Rabbih, al-'Iqd, III, 269.Verse translated in Hammond, The Poetics of S/Exclusion, 187. 67Ibn ‛Abd Rabbih, al-'Iqd, III, 277-278.This section also includes verses by a bedouin for her deceased husband and another report by al-Asma'ī. 68Ibn ‛Abd Rabbih, al-'Iqd, III, 279-80.Akhbār preserved the verses of those poets whose dīwāns had been lost or never compiled.See Gruendler, B., "Verse and Taxes: the Function of Poetry in Selected Literary Akhbār of the Third/Ninth Century", in On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Literature, P. Kennedy (ed.), Wiesbaden, 2005, 85-124. 69Ibn ‛Abd Rabbih, al-'Iqd, III, 280-2.
replacement by slave-girls has been highlighted by some scholars as evidence that slave-girls became a main source of literary inspira-tion from the beginning of the third ninth century.Slave girls were prominent in male society from which free women had virtually disappeared. 70uzanne Stetkevych has pointed that the rithā' verses in the cor-pus of pre-islamic poetry are almost exclusively for the male warrior.mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, sons not yet old enough to fight, were not commemorated in the elegies that the tradition has pre-served. 71Such elegies began to crop up after the coming of islam, especially in the early umayyad period.The great umayyad poet Jarīr broke away from the tradition, not without opposition, when he devoted a few verses to his wife Khālida. 72Poets followed suit in elegizing their wives, even though an elegy for a woman would have been inconceivable, a few decades earlier. 73Elegy for one's wife came to form a distinct subgenre in which grief for a spouse led the poet to meditate on his own grim future as is the case of the elegy of muwaylik al-mazmūn for his wife. 74These elegies were neverthe-less characterized by reserve, the poets taking refuge in general con-siderations in order to avoid precise evocations.This was probably due to the social condition of the free wife whose life was surround-ed by a respectful discretion.Such constraints were not applicable in the case of slave-girls; this explains why the elegies written for them were more spontaneous; 75 this also partially explains the presence of a selection of poems for the jāriya and the absence of poems for the free wife in Kitāb al-durra.To draw attention to a deceased free female member of the household would have constituted some kind of a transgression of islamic bereavement rules.Nevertheless, ibn ‛Abd rabbih could have included, had he chosen to, verses on husbands elegizing their wives in his section on marāthī.Such verses existed and he con-sciously chose to exclude them.ibn ‛Abd rabbih limited his choice of verses elegizing women to the section entitled "Whoever elegized his jāriya" -in addition to the lone poem by al-buhturī on the oc-casion of the death of a daughter, mentioned above.
The last section on marāthī, "Elegies for the illustrious", includes elegies for the prophet muhammad, the caliphs Abū bakr, ‛umar b. al-Khattāb, ‛umar b. ‛Abd al-‛Azīz, al-mutawwakil, the martyrs of the battle of badr, and others.There is not a single verse elegizing an illustrious woman. 76This may have to do with the constraints imposed on the poet considering the limited possibilities open to him.77indeed, detailed descriptions of a woman in a poem could cause difficulties.The famous fourth/tenth century poet almutanabbī, for instance, was criticized for composing an elegy upon the death of the sister of Sayf al-dawla, the hamdānid prince of Aleppo.The verses he composed upon the death of Khawla aroused the rage of medieval critics who were guided by a strict, over-re-fined, sense of propriety.A court poet was not expected to address a deceased princess personally as al-mutanabbī had done. 78it was essential to ensure that the woman in the elegy does not become the center of scandal simply by having her name on the lips of the pub-lic.This argument had already been put forward much earlier on by the umayyad poet al-Farazdaq when he criticized Jarīr for compos-ing an elegy on the death of his wife.
if propriety was the reason behind the absence of elegies for free women on the part of the male poets, what about the female poets themselves?how can one account for the almost complete absence of verses by a mother lamenting her deceased daughter or a daugh-ter elegizing her deceased mother?This absence is all the more sur-prising given that elegy is the one poetic domain in which women were present, as the ‛iqd's section under study clearly confirms.how do we account for the surprising presence of women as pro-ducers of elegies and yet the quasi-total absence of women as sub-jects of elegies?
As Jum'a has noted, there are many verses by women for their departed fathers but very rarely verses elegizing departed mothers. he wonders about the absence of verses by both daughters and sons for their mothers.Pellat, similarly, states that «[…] the affirmation of the sincerity and poignancy of the feelings of the poets, both male and female, does not explain the fact […] that these poets refrained from expressing their sorrow at the death of a mother, a wife, a daughter or a sister.»Smoor has also pointed that the sensitivity and emotionality which ibn al-rūmī displayed in the elegy on his middle son is missing in the elegy on his mother. 79Thus, while one finds a large number of poems by mothers elegizing their sons, sisters el-egizing their brothers, and daughters elegizing their fathers, one finds only rarely verses by brothers elegizing the passing of their sisters, sons the passing of their mothers and fathers the passing of their daughters.moreover, one does not find verses of sisters elegizing the passing of a sister, a daughter the passing of a mother, or a mother elegizing the passing of a daughter.in fact, in Kitāb al-durra, they do not appear at all. 80Although the poetic genre may explain in some large part this gender discrepancy, a uniquely literary explana-tion, remains, i believe unsatisfactory.As Spiegel states, it is impor-tant «to apprehend the constitutive silences and self-generated divi-sions and undoings that medieval texts engage in». 81indeed, «where there is collective memory, there is also organized forgetting». 82l-QanÐara (AQ) XXXI 2, julio-diciembre 2010, pp.411-436 ISSN 0211-3589 The last two sections in Kitāb al-durra, entitled, "Condolences," and "royal Condolences," include a total of three anecdotes which feature women. in the section on "Condolences," the Caliph alma'mūn goes to the mother of his deceased vizier, umm al-Fadl b.Sahl, in order to console her. he tells her: «O mother, you have only lost the sight of him; now i am your son, in his place.»umm al-Fadl responded: «O Commander of the Faithful, a man whose death has availed me with a son like you, is surely worthy of being regretted». 83in the section on "royal condolences," one anecdote involves Alexander the great and his mother.The other anecdote concerns the death of a sister of the pious umayyad caliph ‛umar b. ‛Abd al-‛Azīz.As people came to present their condolences, the Caliph ignored them.When people saw that, they desisted.So the caliph told them that he was accustomed to people not expressing sympathy for the death of a woman, unless it is a mother. 84ndering death?
According to F. malti-douglas, adab must be understood in terms of the specific ways in which the various materials included in it are presented, exploited and manipulated. 85in the words of beatrice gruendler, «a collection as a whole conveys its compiler's message, which differs from any pre-existing messages of its con-stituent parts». 86Julia bray talks about the adīb as a mythographer, an intentional producer of meaning. 87The oral canon was open and «with conscious ikhtiyār (selection/choice) the agency of the selec-tor/editor acquired added and canonizing importance». 88in the specific case of al-'iqd, a significant amount of material was ob-tained by ibn ‛Abd rabbih from discussion sessions and study-cir-cles, and not only from written sources. 89l-‛iqd, as an exemplary text, not only reflects a dominant ideol-ogy, but contributes towards the dominant discourse by shaping, se-lecting, and confirming cultural constructs governing mental and social life.indeed, «adab fostered the sense of cultural unity based on the cultivation of a common repertoire of sentiments, values and refinements,» and in a more general way a common cultural identi-ty.90 An adab anthology such as al-'iqd, in conjunction with other adab and poetry anthologies, played a pivotal role in implicating women in the works of death and in «the solidification of the cul-tural association between women and rithā'».91 The textual examples show the extent to which gender shapes representations of grief.The anecdotes are populated by female characters who are actors in the great drama of death.They are found by deathbeds, they are standing by the graves, and they mourn their brothers and sons in versified lament.al-'iqd gives a central place to the figure of the mourning woman, underscoring the degree to which the performance of gender is always in play.The demarcation of women's grief as a volatile emotional site in effect licenses women' works of mourning and authorizes female speech.
The large number of verses, authored by women bespeaks wom-en's widely-perceived intimacy with death as well as the license to say poetry afforded to women in proximity to death.Women's im-portant cultural work in grief and lamentation registers as a textual activity.The text under study suggests the cultural power of elegy voiced by a female.however, it is important to take note of Shawkat Toorawa's remark that the «use of the classical language was gender-linked: it was a language written and spoken primarily by males, and by women prepared for and inducted into the male environment of the classical language, principally women scholars, singing girls and poetesses.»he singles out the early poetesses al-en's conceivable response. 96Even if the female speaker is invented by the male author, «a man's words spoken through a woman's body, however fictive and fabricated, are not perceived or received by the reader as thoroughly male; their valence changes in accord-ance with the gender of the speaker articulating them». 97it is hence necessary to trace «the movement back and forth between the representation of gender (in its male-centered frame of reference) and what that representation leaves out, or more pointedly, makes unrepresentable». 98his paper has tried to interrogate Kitāb al-durra with respect to traces of possible choices not made.it has attempted to locate what seems to be «repressed» in the text by pointing to «the positions and positioning of female figures and female voices within the pat-terns of male discourse and procedures of signification». 99in at-tempting to determine what material was ignored, buried, and edit-ed, and how priorities were arranged, the experience we are engaged in understanding becomes «thicker, less rarefied, more nuanced and multi-dimensional». 100lthough this paper has focused on the deployment of women in Kitāb al-durra, it is important to mention that the text includes sub-stantial material on men as mourners.however, men's authorial voice being generally dominant in the early islamic texts, this arti-cle has focused on highlighting women's presence in a cultural and literary tradition in which women's voices and roles are curtailed.That men mourned does not preclude the «fact» that mourning was essentially women's work.Some anecdotes in Kitāb al-durra do not convey a sense of real time and place, individual persons or concrete events; nevertheless, these fictions of gender participated in replicating the existing order.The text assimilates the religious ideology presenting and exploiting specific materials in ways that reproduce the ideology on mourning al-QanÐara (AQ) XXXI 2, julio-diciembre 2010, pp.411-436 ISSN 0211-3589 i.1.introduction (p.228) i.2. last words (pp.228-233) i.3.Apprehension at the moment of death (pp.233-234) i.4.Crying over the dead (pp.234-236) i.5.utterances by the grave (pp.236-237) i.6.Standing by the graves and praising the deceased (pp.237-244) ii.Elegiac poetry ii.1.Self-lament and those who described their grave, and wrote their own epitaph (pp.244-250) ii.2.lament of one's son (pp.250-262) ii.3.lament of one's brother (pp.262-277) ii.4.lament of one's husband (pp.277-278) ii.5.lament of one's slave-girl (pp.279-282) ii.6.lament of one's daughter (pp.282-284) ii.7.lament of nobles (pp.284-303) ii.8.Condolences (pp.303-307) ii.9.royal condolences (pp.307-311)