Consorts of the Caliphs. Ibn al-Sa'i

and who are given far more space in Consorts of the Caliphs.²⁵ These figures so fascinate Ibn al-Sāʿī that he stretches his book’s brief to include a life sketch of one, the famous poet ʿInān, who may not have been a caliph’s concubine.²⁶

      Consorts of the Caliphs as Abbasid Loyalism

Why was Ibn al-Sāʿī so interested in Abbasid caliphs’ wives and lovers? Why was he equally committed to the aesthetes and to the doers of good works? There are two answers. The first is that he was a fervent loyalist. About one third of all the writings ascribed to him were devoted to the Abbasids. Of the nineteen such titles listed by Muṣṭafā Jawād in the introduction to his 1962 edition of Consorts of the Caliphs, under the title Jihāt al-aʾimmah al-khulafāʾ min al-ḥarāʾir wa-l-imāʾ, the following were clearly designed to please, and as propaganda for, current members of the ruling house: Cognizance of the Virtues of the Caliphs of the House of al-ʿAbbās (al-Īnās bi-manāqib al-khulafāʾ min Banī l-ʿAbbās);²⁷ The Flower-Filled Garden: Episodes from the Life of the Caliph al-Nāṣir (al-Rawḍ al-nāḍir fī akhbār al-imām al-Nāṣir),²⁸ along with a life of a slave of al-Nāṣir, his commander-in-chief, Qushtimir (Nuzhat al-rāghib al-muʿtabir fī sīrat al-malik Qushtimir);²⁹ a life of the caliph al-Mustanṣir (Iʿtibār al-mustabṣir fī sīrat al-Mustanṣir) and a collection of poems—“ropes of pearls”—in his praise, most likely composed by Ibn al-Sāʿī himself (al-Qalāʾid al-durriyyah fī l-madāʾiḥ al-Mustanṣiriyyah);³⁰ a life of the caliph al-Mustaʿṣim (Sīrat al-Mustaʿṣim bi-llāh); and a book “about the blessed al-Mustaʿṣim’s two sons: how much was spent on them, details of their food and clothing, and the poems written in their praise” (Nuzhat al-abṣār fī akhbār ibnay al-Mustaʿṣim bi-llāh al-ʿAbbāsī).³¹

The caliphs were active in endowing libraries: al-Nāṣir that of the old Niẓāmiyyah Law College as well as that of the Sufi convent (ribāṭ) founded by his wife Saljūqī Khātūn,³² al-Mustanṣir that of the law college he had founded in 631/1233–34, the Mustanṣiriyyah. For grandees to add their own gifts of books was a way of ingratiating themselves with the ruler.³³ Ibn al-Sāʿī was a librarian in both colleges, before and after the Mongol invasion, as already mentioned,³⁴ so the following titles should be counted as part of his loyalist output: The High Virtues of the Teachers of the Niẓāmiyyah Law College (al-Manāqib al-ʿaliyyah li-mudarrisī l-madrasah al-Niẓāmiyyah) and The Regulations of the Mustanṣiriyyah Law College (Sharṭ al-madrasah al-Mustanṣiriyyah).³⁵

How do the early Abbasid concubines of Consorts of the Caliphs fit into this program of glorifying the dynasty’s virtues? The first entries on them describe only their subjects’ physical and intellectual qualities. But about halfway through the book comes a pivotal entry, that on Isḥāq al-Andalusiyyah, concubine of al-Mutawakkil and mother of his son, the great regent al-Muwaffaq. When she died in 270/883, during the regency, a court poet composed a majestic elegy on her, describing her public benefactions and her private, maternal virtues, which were also public in that her son was the savior of the state.³⁶ Ibn al-Sāʿī lets the poem speak for itself, but the reader might be expected to know that al-Muwaffaq had been engaged for years in putting down a rebellion of black plantation slaves in lower Iraq, which had caused widespread damage and panic. He finally crushed it in the year of his mother’s death.³⁷ Contemporary loyalist readers would certainly have made a connection between this tribute to the virtuous mother of a heroic son and the elegies collected by Ibn al-Sāʿī on “the blessed consort, Lady Zumurrud,” mother of the caliph al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh (Marāthī al-jihah al-saʿīdah Zumurrud Khātūn wālidat al-khalīfah al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh).³⁸

As Consorts of the Caliphs progresses, the theme of feminine virtue becomes more frequent. Thus Maḥbūbah, the slave of al-Mutawakkil, mourns him defiantly after his murder, at the risk of her life, and dies of grief for him.³⁹ Ḍirār, concubine of the regent al-Muwaffaq and mother of his son, the caliph al-Muʿtaḍid, another great ruler, was “always mindful of her dependents.”⁴⁰ The princess Qaṭr al-Nadā, wife of al-Muʿtaḍid, was “one of the most intelligent and regal women who ever lived”—sufficiently so to puncture the caliph’s arrogance.⁴¹ Khamrah, slave of the murdered caliph al-Muqtadir (son of al-Muʿtaḍid) and mother of al-Muqtadir’s son Prince ʿĪsā, “was always mindful of her obligations and performed many pious deeds. She was generous to the poor, to the needy, to those who petitioned her, and to noble families who had fallen on hard times”⁴²—the kind of encomium that Ibn al-Sāʿī goes on to apply to late-Abbasid consorts. Khamrah ends the sequence of early-Abbasid concubines; after her begins a series of virtuous Saljūq princesses and late-Abbasid models of female virtue whose merits clearly redound to the honor of the dynasty as a whole—merits which in Ibn al-Sāʿī’s time, at least before the Mongols, were highly visible in the streetscape of Baghdad, in the shape of the public works and mausolea ordered by these women.⁴³ In this, important ladies of the caliph’s household were following the example of Zubaydah, the most famous of early-Abbasid princesses, well-known to every citizen of Baghdad and indeed to every pilgrim to Mecca,⁴⁴ and Ibn al-Sāʿī, in recording their piety, good works, and burial places, is following the example of his older contemporary, Ibn al-Jawzī.⁴⁵ According to Jawād, Ibn al-Sāʿī means “Son of the Runner” or merchant’s errand-man; if it is not a surname taken from a distant ancestor, but instead reflects a humble background—as Jawād argues, on the basis that Ibn al-Sāʿī’s father Anjab is unknown to biographers⁴⁶—then Ibn al-Sāʿī’s grateful descriptions of the later consorts’ public works may reflect the feelings of ordinary Baghdadis.

      Virtue, however—loyalty or piety-based virtue that finds social expression—is not the whole reason why Ibn al-Sāʿī devotes so much space to the early-Abbasid concubines, since most of them are not virtuous at all by these standards.

      The Early-Abbasid Consorts as Culture Heroines

The majority of the early-Abbasid consorts were professional poets and musicians. Ibn al-Sāʿī and his sources, which include nearly all the great names in mid-Abbasid cultural mythography,⁴⁷ rate them very highly: ʿInān “was the first poet to become famous under the Abbasids and the most gifted poet of her generation”; the major (male) poets of her time came to her to be judged.⁴⁸ No one “sang, played music, wrote poetry, or played chess so well” as ʿArīb.⁴⁹ Faḍl al-Shāʿirah was not only one of the greatest wits of her time, but wrote better prose than any state secretary.⁵⁰ Above all, they excel in the difficult art of capping verse and composing on the spur of the moment.⁵¹ Their accomplishments are essentially competitive, and it is usually men that they compete with. The competition is not only a salon game. For the male poets—free men who make their living by performing at court—losing poses a risk to their reputation and livelihood. The women who challenge them or respond to their challenge are all slaves (jāriyah is the term used for such highly trained slave women). Of the risks to a slave woman who fails to perform, or to best her challenger, only one is spelled out in Consorts of the Caliphs, in the case of ʿInān, whose owner whips her.⁵² On the other hand, the returns on talent and self-confidence can be great, as is seen in the case of ʿArīb, whose career continues into old age, when her verve and authority seem undiminished and she has apparently achieved a wealthy independence.⁵³ We are shown how, between poets, the fellowship of professionalism transcends differences between male and female, free and slave. But even in the battles of wits between a jāriyah and her lover, where the stakes are very high—if she misses her step, the woman risks not just the loss of favor and position, but the loss of affection too, for many jāriyahs are depicted as being truly in love with their owners—there is often, again, a touch of something like comradeship: a woman’s ability to rise to the occasion can compel her lover’s quasi-professional admiration. We should remember that nearly all the early-Abbasid caliphs composed poetry or music themselves, and they all considered