Nazhun al-Garnatiya bint al-Qulaiʽiya explained

Nazhūn bint al-Qulāiya al-Gharnātiya (Arabic: نزهون بنت القلاعي الغرناطية, 12th-century) was a Granadan Qiyan and poet, noted for her outrageous verse.

Life

Little is known about Nazhun's life. Medieval Arabic biographical dictionaries and accounts of her poetry are the main sources. Ibn al-Abbar has her as a (near-)contemporary of the twelfth-century Ḥamda bint Ziyād al-Muaddib.^[1] Anecdotes about Nazhun also feature Abu Bakr al-Amā al-Makhzumi as Nazhun's teacher of the arts of satire; he seems to have been alive in the twelfth century, at some point after 1145;^[2] indeed, Nazhun 'figures so prominently' in biographical entries about al-Makhzumi that 'his fame seems to be completely intertwined with hers'. She was supposedly the daughter of a qadi (judge).^[3]

Work

Although little of her work survives, Nazhun is, among medieval Andalusian women poets, probably second only to her contemporary Hafsa Bint al-Hajj al-Rukuniyya in the quantity of her work preserved: classical sources attribute to her twenty-one lines of verse from seven poems. In addition, the later Ùddat al-jalīs by Àlī ibn Bishrī attributes to her a muwashshaḥa of twenty-five lines, giving her the distinction of being the only female poet in the collection.^[4] She usually appears getting the better of male poets and aristocrats around her with her witty invective. In Marla Segol's words, "as a rule, Nazhun represents her body in ways that disrupt conventional strategies for control of women’s speech and sexuality, and protests the merchandising of women’s bodies."^[5] The study of her work has been hampered by scholars either not comprehending, or choosing not to expound on, its obscenity and double entendres.

In the translation of A. J. Arberry, one of her various ripostes runs:^[6]

The poet al-Kutandi challenged the blind al-Makhzumi to complete the following verses:

If you had eyes to view

The man who speaks with you—The blind man failed to discover a suitable continuation, but Nazhun, who happened to be present, improvized after this fashion:

However many there may be

All dumbly you’d behold

His anklets’ shining gold.

The rising moon, it seems,

In his bright buttons gleams,

And in his gown, I trow,

There sways a slender bough.

Editions

Modern collections of significant bodies of Nazhun's work include:

• Dīwān de Las Poetisas de Al-Andalus, ed. by Teresa Garulo (Ediciones Hiperión, 1986), pp. 110 ff.
• Nisāʾ min al-Andalus, ed. by Aḥmad Khalīl Jumʻah (Damascus: al-Yamāmah lil-Ṭibāʻah wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʻ, 2001), pp. 371–402 [نسـاء من الأندلس, أحمد خليل جمعة].

The following table charts the main early sources on Nazhun and her poetry:

!Text type!Editor!Title!Edition/translation

muwashshaḥa anthology	Alī Ibn Bishrī	Uddat al-jalīs	S. M. Stern, 'Muwashshaha li-sh-shd'ira l-Andalusiyya Nazhun' [A muwashshah by the Andalusian poet Nazhun], Majalle-ye 'Ulum-i Isldmiyya [Aligarh] (June 1960), pp. 1–8
			Dı̄wān al-Muwashshaḥāt al-Andalusiyya, ed. by S. Ghāzī (Alexandria: Munsha’at al-Ma‘ārif, 1979), pp. 551–52.
			Alī Ibn Bishrī, The Ùddat al-jalīs of Àlī ibn Bishrī: An Anthology of Andalusian Arabic Muwashshaḥāt, trans. by Alan Jones (Cambridge: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial, 1992), 360–61.
poetry anthology	Ibn Saʻīd al-Andalūsī (1213–86)	Rāyāt al-mubarrizīn wa-ghāyāt al-mumayyizīn	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. 60 (chapter 82).
			Book: ʻAlī ibn Mūsá Ibn Saʻīd al-Andalūsī Abū al-Hasan. Rāyāt al-mubarrizīn wa-ghāyāt al-mumayyizīn. Tlasdar. 1987. 159–61. [{{Cite book|last=علي بن موسى بن سعيد الأندلسي أبو الحسن|title=رايات المبرزين وغايات المميزين|publisher=طلاس للدراسات والترجمة والنشر|year=1987|editor=محمد رضوان الداية|url=https://archive.org/details/waq31146|pages=159–61}}]
		Al-Mughrib fī ḥulā l-Maghrib	Ibn Saʿı̄d al-Maghribı̄, Al-Mughrib fı̄ Ḥulā al-Maghrib, ed. Sh. Ḍayf, 2 vols (Cairo: Dār al-Ma‘ārif, 1953–55), I 223–28, II 121.
biographical dictionary	al-Maqqarı̄ (c. 1578–1632), citing Ibn Sa‘īd's Al-Ṭāli‘ al-Sa‘ı̄d fı̄ Tārı̄kh Banı̄ Sa‘ı̄d	Nafḥ al-Ṭı̄b min Ghuṣn al-Andalus al-Raṭı̄b	al-Maqqarı̄, Nafḥ al-Ṭı̄b min Ghuṣn al-Andalus al-Raṭı̄b, ed. by I. ‘Abbās (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1968), I 139, 190-93, IV 295-98
biographical dictionary	Ibn al-Khaṭı̄b (1313-74), citing Ibn Sa‘īd's Al-Ṭāli‘ al-Sa‘ı̄d fı̄ Tārı̄kh Banı̄ Sa‘ı̄d	Al-Iḥāṭa fı̄ Akhbār Gharnāṭa	Ibn al-Khaṭı̄b, Al-Iḥāṭa fı̄ Akhbār Gharnāṭa, ed. Muh‘Aammad ‘Abd Allah ‘Inān, 4 vols (Cairo: Dār al-Ma‘ārif, 1955), I 425-27, 432, II 504-5, III 344-45
biographical dictionary/anthology	Ibn al-Abbar (1199–1260)	Kitāb Tuḥfat al-Qādim	al-Balfı̄qı̄, Al-Muqtaḍab min Kitāb Tuḥfat al-Qādim li Ibn al-Abbār Abı̄ ‘Abdillāh Muḥammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Quḍā‘ı̄ al-Andalusı̄, ed. by I. al-Abyārı̄ (Cairo: al-Maṭba‘a al-Amı̄riyya, 1957), pp. 164-65.

Further reading

• Ben Mohamed, Alfonso Ali, ‘Nazhūn Bint al-Qilā‘ı̄’, Studi Magrebini, 18 (1986), pp. 61–68.
• Schippers, Arie, '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.
• Hammond, Marlé, 'He said "She said": Narrations of Women's Verse in Classical Arabic Literature. A Case Study: Nazhuūn's Hijā’ of Abū Bakr al-Makhzūmī', Middle Eastern Literatures, 6:1 (2003), 3-18
• Hammond, Marlé, 'He Desires Her? Situating Nazhun's Muwashshah in an Androgynous Aesthetic of Courtly Love', in Muwashshah! Proceedings of the International Conference on Arabic and Hebrew Strophic Poetry and its Romance Parallels, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 8–10 October 2004, Research Papers on Arabic and Jewish Strophic Poetry (London: RN Books, 2006), pp. 141–156.
• Segol, Marla, 'Representing the Body in Poems by Medieval Muslim Women', Medieval Feminist Forum, 45 (2009), 147–69.
• Tijani, O. Ishaq and Imed Nsiri, 'Gender and Poetry in Muslim Spain: Mapping the Sexual-Textual Politics of Al-Andalus', Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies, 1.4 (October 2017), 52-67
• Velázquez Basanta, F. N., 'Nazhūn bint al-Qulayʿī', in Biblioteca de al-Andalus: encyclopedia de la cultura andalusí, 8 vols (Almería: Fundación Ibn Tufayl de estudios árabes, 2012), VI 615a–620b
• Khansa, E. (2022). Nazhūn. In: Sauer, M.M., Watt, D., McAvoy, L.H. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_32-1

Notes and References

1. al-Balfı̄qı̄, Al-Muqtaḍab min Kitāb Tuḥfat al-Qādim li Ibn al-Abbār Abı̄ ‘Abdillāh Muḥammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Quḍā‘ı̄ al-Andalusı̄, ed. by I. al-Abyārı̄ (Cairo: al-Maṭba‘a al-Amı̄riyya, 1957), p. 164.
2. al-Maqqarı̄, Nafḥ al-Ṭı̄b min Ghuṣn al-Andalus al-Raṭı̄b, ed. by I. ‘Abbās (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1968), I 139.
3. Marlé Hammond, 'He said "She said": Narrations of Women's Verse in Classical Arabic Literature. A Case Study: Nazhuūn's Hijā’ of Abū Bakr al-Makhzūmī', Middle Eastern Literatures, 6:1 (2003), 3-18. .
4. Otto Zwartjes, 'Thematical Correspondences between the Romance and Hispano-Arabic xarja-s', in Proceedings of the 17th Congress of the UEAI (St Petersburg: Thesa, 1997), pp. 296–315 (p. 299).
5. Marla Segol, 'Representing the Body in Poems by Medieval Muslim Women', Medieval Feminist Forum, 45 (2009), 147-69 (156) https://doi.org/10.17077/1536-8742.1773; cf. Marlé Hammond, 'He said "She said": Narrations of Women's Verse in Classical Arabic Literature. A Case Study: Nazhuūn's Hijaū' of Abuū Bakr al-Makhzuūmī', Middle Eastern Literatures: Incorporating Edebiyat, 6 (2003), 3–18, DOI: 10.1080/14752620306884.
6. 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), p. 92; For the Arabic 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. 60.