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Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad
Contributor(s): Al-Sāʿī, Ibn (Author), Toorawa, Shawkat M. (Editor), Literature, The Editors of the Library o (Translator)
ISBN: 1479850985     ISBN-13: 9781479850983
Publisher: New York University Press
OUR PRICE:   $33.25  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: May 2015
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography
- History | Middle East - General
- Literary Collections | Middle Eastern
Dewey: B
LCCN: 2014044217
Series: Library of Arabic Literature
Physical Information: 1" H x 6.3" W x 9.2" (1.20 lbs) 272 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - Middle East
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

Consorts of the Caliphs is a seventh/thirteenth-century compilation of anecdotes about thirty-eight women who were, as the title suggests, consorts to those in power, most of them concubines of the early Abbasid caliphs and wives of latter-day caliphs and sultans. This slim but illuminating volume is one of the few surviving texts by Ibn al-Sa'i (d. 674/1276). Ibn al-Sa'i was a prolific Baghdadi scholar who chronicled the academic and political elites of his city, and whose career straddled the final years of the Abbasid dynasty and the period following the cataclysmic Mongol invasion of 656/1258.

In this work, Ibn al-Sa'i is keen to forge a connection between the munificent wives of his time and the storied lovers 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, and the artistry of such musical and literary celebrities as 'Arib and Fadl, who bested the male poets and singers of their day. From times closer to Ibn al-Sa'i's own--when Abbasid authority was trying to reassert itself and Baghdad was again a major center of intellectual and religious activity--we meet women such as Banafsha, who endowed law colleges, had bridges built, and provisioned pilgrims bound for Mecca; slave women whose funeral services were led by caliphs; and noble Saljuq princesses from Afghanistan.
Informed by the author's own sources, his insider knowledge, and well-known literary materials, these singular biographical sketches, though delivered episodically, bring the belletristic culture of the Baghdad court to life, particularly in the personal narratives and poetry of culture heroines otherwise lost to history.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Contributor Bio(s): Bray, Julia: - Julia Bray became the Abdulaziz Saud AlBabtain Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford and a fellow of St. John's College in 2012, having previously taught at the universities of Manchester, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Paris 8-Vincennes--Saint-Denis. She writes on medieval to early modern Arabic literature, life-writing, and social history. She has contributed to the New Cambridge History of Islam (2010), to Essays in Arabic Literary Biography 1350-1850 (2009), and to cross-cultural studies such as Approaches to the Byzantine Family (2013) and edited Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam (2006). With Wen-chin Ouyang, she edits the monograph series Edinburgh Studies in Classical Arabic Literature. With Helen Blatherwick, she is editing a special issue of the journal Cultural History on the history of emotions in Arabic.Al-Sa'i, Ibn: - 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.Toorawa, Shawkat M.: - 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.Warner, Marina: - 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.