Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad: 13 (Library of Arabic Literature)

by Marina Warner (Author), Marina Warner (Author), Shawkat M. Toorawa (Author), Julia Bray (Author), Ibn al-Sai (Author), The Editors of the Library of Arabic Literature (Author)

New
Paperback
2017
$16.80

Accounts of remarkable women at the world's most powerful court
Consorts of the Caliphs is a seventh/thirteenth-century compilation ofanecdotes about thirty-eight women who were consorts to those in power, most ofthem concubines of the early Abbasid caliphs and wives of latter-day caliphsand sultans. This slim but illuminating volume is one of the few survivingtexts by the prolific Baghdadi scholar Ibn al-Sa'i,who chronicled the academic and political elites of his city in the final yearsof the Abbasid dynasty and the period following the cataclysmic Mongol invasionof 656 H/1258 AD.

In this work, Ibn al-Sa'i is keen toforge a connection between the munificent wives of his time and the storiedlovers of the so-called golden age of Baghdad. Thus, from the earlier period,we find Harun al-Rashid pining for his brother's beautiful slave, Ghadir, andthe artistry of such musical and literary celebrities as Arib and Fadl, whobested the male poets and singers of their day. From times closer to Ibn al-Sa?i's own, wemeet women such as Banafsha, who endowed law colleges, had bridges built, andprovisioned pilgrims bound for Mecca; slave women whose funeral services wereled by caliphs; and noble Saljuq princesses from Afghanistan.

Informed by the author's own sources, hisinsider knowledge, and well-known literary materials, these singularbiographical sketches bring the belletristic culture of the Baghdad court to life,particularly in the personal narratives and poetry of culture heroinesotherwise lost to history.

Synopsis

Accounts of remarkable women at the world's most powerful court

Consorts of the Caliphs is a seventh/thirteenth-century compilation ofanecdotes about thirty-eight women who were consorts to those in power, most ofthem concubines of the early Abbasid caliphs and wives of latter-day caliphsand sultans. This slim but illuminating volume is one of the few survivingtexts by the prolific Baghdadi scholar Ibn al-Sa'i,who chronicled the academic and political elites of his city in the final yearsof the Abbasid dynasty and the period following the cataclysmic Mongol invasionof 656 H/1258 AD.

In this work, Ibn al-Sa'i is keen toforge a connection between the munificent wives of his time and the storiedlovers of the so-called golden age of Baghdad. Thus, from the earlier period,we find Harun al-Rashid pining for his brother's beautiful slave, Ghadir, andthe artistry of such musical and literary celebrities as Arib and Fadl, whobested the male poets and singers of their day. From times closer to Ibn al-Sa?i's own, wemeet women such as Banafsha, who endowed law colleges, had bridges built, andprovisioned pilgrims bound for Mecca; slave women whose funeral services wereled by caliphs; and noble Saljuq princesses from Afghanistan.

Informed by the author's own sources, hisinsider knowledge, and well-known literary materials, these singularbiographical sketches bring the belletristic culture of the Baghdad court to life,particularly in the personal narratives and poetry of culture heroinesotherwise lost to history.

$16.80

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 176
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 05 Sep 2017
ISBN 10: 1479866792
ISBN 13: 9781479866793

Media Reviews

Yet another wonderful collaborative project of the Library of Arabic Literature... Clear from this volume's pages is that there was great appreciation of the original text and the entire process of editing and translating was a labor of love; the reader-specialist or non-specialist-reaps these fruits by getting to know another great text of Arabic classical literature. -Journal of the American Oriental Society

Author Bio

Marina Warner is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her most recent book, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, as well as the 2013 Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Shawkat M. Toorawa is Professor of Arabic literature in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale University, where he teaches classical Arabic, the Arabic humanities, and literatures of the world. Julia Bray is currently the Laudian Professor of Arabic in the University of Oxford, and a fellow of St. John's College. She has written the chapter on medieval to early modern Arabic literature for the New Cambridge History of Islam (Cambridge, 2010), and a survey of gender in medieval Arabic writing and modern historical scholarship for L. Brubaker and J.M.H. Smith, Gender in the Early Medieval World (Cambridge, 2004). Ibn al-Sa'i (d. 674 H/1276 AD) was a historian, law librarian, and prolific author from Baghdad. His considerable scholarly output included treatises on hadith, literary commentaries, histories of the caliphs, and biographical collections, though little has survived.