Hafsa bint al-Hajj al-Rukuniyya
Ḥafṣa bint al-Ḥājj ar-Rakūniyya (حفصة بنت الحاج الركونية, born c. 1135, died AH 586/1190–91 CE) was a Granadan aristocrat and perhaps one of the most celebrated Andalusian female poets of medieval Arabic literature.
Biography[]
We know little about Ḥafṣa's origins and early life. Sources do not tell us when she was born, but her birth must have been in or after AH 530/1135.[1] She was the daughter of a Berber man, al-Hajj ar-Rukuni, a Granadan, who does not seem to have left traces among biographers. This family was noble and rich. We can therefore consider the father of Hafsa a notable figure in the city.[1] Around the time that the Almohads came to power in 1154, Ḥafṣa seems to have begun a relationship with the poet Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik Ibn Saʿīd; to judge from the surviving poetry, Ḥafṣa initiated the affair.[2] With this, Ḥafṣa enters the historical record more clearly; the relationship seems to have continued until Abū Jaʿfar's execution in 1163 by Abū Saʿīd ʿUthmān, son of Abd al-Mu'min and governor of Granada: Abū Jaʿfar had sided with his extended family, the Banu Saʿid, against Adb al-Muʿmin.
Ḥafṣa later became known as a teacher, working for Caliph Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur to educate his daughters in Marrakesh. She died there in 1190 or 1191. She is perhaps one of the most celebrated Andalusian female poets of medieval Arabic literature.[3]
Poetry[]
Around 60 lines of Ḥafṣa's poetry survive, among nineteen compositions, making Ḥafṣa the best attested of the medieval female Moorish poets (ahead of Wallada bint al-Mustakfi and Nazhun al-Garnatiya bint al-Qulai’iya). Her verse encompasses love poetry, elegy, panegyric, satirical, and even obscene verse, giving her work unusual range. Perhaps her most famous exchange is a response to Abū Jaʿfar, here as translated by A. J. Arberry:[4]
- Abu Jaafar the poet was in love with Hafsa, and sent her the following poem:
- God ever guard the memory
- Of that fair night, from censure free,
- Which hid two lovers, you and me,
- Deep in Mu’ammal’s poplar-grove;
- And, as the happy hours we spent,
- There gently wafted a sweet scent
- From flowering Nejd, all redolent
- With the rare fragrance of the clove.
- High in the trees a turtle-dove
- Sang rapturously of our love,
- And boughs of basil swayed above
- A gently murmuring rivulet;
- The meadow quivered with delight
- Beholding such a joyous sight,
- The interclasp of bodies white,
- And breasts that touched, and lips that met.
- Hafsa replied in this manner:
- Do not suppose it pleased the dell
- That we should there together dwell
- In happy union; truth to tell,
- It showed us naught but petty spite.
- The river did not clap, I fear,
- For pleasure that we were so near,
- The dove raised not his song of cheer
- Save for his personal delight.
- Think not such noble thoughts as you
- Are worthy of; for if you do
- You’ll very quickly find, and rue,
- High thinking is not always wise.
- I scarce suppose that yonder sky
- Displayed its wealth of stars on high
- For any reason, but to spy
- On our romance with jealous eyes.
References[]
- ^ Jump up to: a b Di Giacomo, Louis (1947). HESPERIS : Archives berbères et bulletin de l'Institut des Hautes Etudes Marocaines. 34. Paris: LIBRAIRIE LAROSE. p. 20-21.
- ^ Arie Schippers, 'The Role of Women in Medieval Andalusian Arabic Story-Telling', in Verse and the Fair Sex: Studies in Arabic Poetry and in the Representation of Women in Arabic Literature. A Collection of Papers Presented at the Fifteenth Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et des Islamisants (Utrecht/Driebergen, September 13-19, 1990), ed. by Frederick de Jong (Utrecht: Publications of the M. Th. Houstma Stichting, 1993), pp. 139-51 at 149; http://dare.uva.nl/document/184872.
- ^ Josef W. Meri (31 October 2005). Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 308–. ISBN 978-1-135-45603-0.
- ^ Moorish Poetry: A Translation of ’The Pennants’, an Anthology Compiled in 1243 by the Andalusian Ibn Saʿid, trans. by A. J. Arberry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), pp. 94–95. For the original see El libro de las banderas de los campeones, de Ibn Saʿid al-Magribī, ed. by Emilio García Gómez (Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, 1942), p. 61.
Sources[]
- Al-Mallah, Majd (6 April 2020). "Voice and Power: Ḥafṣah bint al-Ḥājj and the Poetics of Women in Al-Andalus". Journal of Arabic Literature. 51 (1–2): 1–26. doi:10.1163/1570064x-12341397.
- Moorish Poetry: A Translation of ’The Pennants’, an Anthology Compiled in 1243 by the Andalusian Ibn Saʿid, trans. by A. J. Arberry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), pp. 94–95.
- Arie Schippers, 'The Role of Women in Medieval Andalusian Arabic Story-Telling', in Verse and the Fair Sex: Studies in Arabic Poetry and in the Representation of Women in Arabic Literature. A Collection of Papers Presented at the Fifteenth Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et des Islamisants (Utrecht/Driebergen, September 13-19, 1990), ed. by Frederick de Jong (Utrecht: Publications of the M. Th. Houstma Stichting, 1993), pp. 139-51 http://dare.uva.nl/document/184872.
- Marlé Hammon, 'Hafsa Bint al-Hajj al Rukuniyya', in Medieval Islamic Civilisation: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Josef W. Meri, 2 vols (New York: Routledge, 2006), I 308.
- Marla Segol, 'Representing the Body in Poems by Medieval Muslim Women', Medieval Feminist Forum, 45 (2009), 147-69: http://ir.uiowa.edu/mff/vol45/iss1/12.
- 12th-century Berber people
- 12th-century women writers
- 12th-century Arabic writers
- Arabic-language women poets
- Arabic-language poets
- Berber poets
- Women poets of Al-Andalus
- 1191 deaths