Consorts of the Caliphs. Ibn al-Sa'i

no. 53, and 25, no. 17. Another example of his practice of recasting his own works was his commentary on the famous and difficult literary Maqāmāt (fifty picaresque episodes in rhymed prose and verse) of al-Ḥarīrī (446–516/1054–1122), which he produced in three sizes: jumbo (twenty-five volumes), medium, and abridged; see Jawād, “Introduction,” 32, no. 54, and 28, nos. 33 and 32.

      22 Jawād, “Introduction,” 16–17, 19.

      23 Ibn Wāṣil al-Ḥamawī (604–97/1208–98), MS of Ishfāʾ al-qulūb, f. 231, quoted by Jawād, “Introduction,” 8; see also Hartmann, “al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh,” 999, 1001.

      24 Hartmann, “al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh,” 999–1002.

      25 §§2–7, 9–11, 13–19, 31; see also 34, 36.

      26 §3.2.

      27 Jawād, “Introduction,” 25, no. 15; see also 30, no. 47: Manāqib al-khulafāʾ al-ʿAbbāsiyyīn (The Virtues of the Abbasid Caliphs).

      28 Jawād, “Introduction,” 27, no. 27.

      29 Jawād, “Introduction,” 31, no. 52. Ibn al-Sāʿī refers to this work in the year 596/1199–1200 in al-Jāmiʿ al-mukhtaṣar, 9:43.

      30 Jawād, “Introduction,” 25, no. 12, and 29, no. 38.

      31 Jawād, “Introduction,” 28, no. 29, and 31, no. 50.

      32 Jawād, “Introduction,” 17, quoting al-Qifṭī (568–646/1172–1248), Tārīḫ al-ḥukamāʾ, 177. This seems to have been in addition to the library installed in Saljūqī Khātūn’s mausoleum: see §29.2.1; and §29.2.2 for the Sufi lodge which according to Ibn al-Sāʿī was built not by Saljūqī Khātūn, but by al-Nāṣir in her memory.

      33 See a later source that quotes Ibn al-Sāʿī as a witness to such donations, cited by Jawād, “Introduction,” 21.

      34 Jawād, “Introduction,” 18, 20.

      35 Jawād, “Introduction,” 30, no. 48, and 28, no. 34.

      36 §12.3.

      37 On the Zanj rebellion, see Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, 180–81.

      38 See Jawād, “Introduction,” 29, no. 42. Zumurrud was a slave: see n. 100 in the main text below. She died in Jumada al-Thani, 599 [February, 1203], according to the sources quoted by Kaḥḥālah in his dictionary of notable women, Aʿlām al-nisāʾ, 2:39. Ibn al-Sāʿī records her death a month earlier, in Rabiʿ al-Thani, and quotes part of a long elegy by a court poet “which I have given in its entirety in Elegies on the Blessed Consort Lady Zumurrud, Mother of the Caliph al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh,” al-Jāmiʿ al-mukhtaṣar, 9:102, 279.

      39 §15.6.

      40 §21.1.

      41 §22.1–2.

      42 §23.3.

      43 See the maps immediately following this introduction.

      44 Zubaydah, the wife of Hārūn al-Rashīd, was famous for provisioning the pilgrim route with wells and resting places.

      45 Under the caliph al-Muqtafī (530–55/1136–60), Abū l-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Jawzī (ca. 511–97/1116–1201), head of two, then five, Baghdad madrasahs, enjoyed an “extraordinary career as a preacher … through his influence on the masses, he was politically important for those caliphs who, in their struggle with the military and the Saljūqs, followed a Ḥanbalī-Sunnī orientation. Diminishing influence under other caliphs was due to different policies adopted by them” (Seidensticker, “Ibn al-Jawzī,” 338). In his history, al-Muntaẓam fī tārīkh al-mulūk wa-l-umam, (The Well-Ordered History of Rulers and Nations) “Ibn al-Jawzī … several times uses the obituary sections of his regnal annals to highlight the virtues of the mothers or consorts of caliphs. It seems likely that this device serves to redeem the reigns of caliphs who are not themselves wholly satisfactory from Ibn al-Jawzī’s viewpoint, and that it is meant to suggest a continuity of virtue in the Abbasid caliphate as a political institution” (Bray, “A Caliph and His Public Relations,” 36). Ibn al-Jawzī records the funerals or burials of notables, especially women, in considerable detail; so too does Ibn al-Sāʿī in Consorts of the Caliphs: see §21.2, §22.3, §23.2, §24.1, §25.2, §27.4, §28.1, §29.2.1, §29.2.2, §29.3, §32.1 and §33.1. One of Ibn al-Sāʿī’s works was devoted to cemeteries and shrines: al-Maqābir al-mashhūrah wa-l-mashāhid al-mazūrah (Famed Tombs and Visited Shrines); it has recently been edited. The work is referred to by Diem and Schöller in The Living and the Dead in Islam, 2:312, but they do not cite Nisāʾ al-khulafāʾ.

      46 Jawād, “Introduction,” 12.

      47 Ibn al-Sāʿī’s sources for the early- to mid-Abbasid consorts include Abū l-ʿAynāʾ, Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī, Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, ʿAlī ibn Yaḥyā the astromancer, Hilāl ibn al-Muḥassin the Sabian, Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Jaʿfar ibn Qudāmah, al-Jahshiyārī, Jaḥẓah, members of the al-Mawṣilī family, al-Ṭabarī, Thābit ibn Sinān, and Thaʿlab; for all of these, see the glossaries.

      48 §3.3.

      49 §6.4.

      50 §13.1, §13.7.

      51 §3.1: ʿInān; §6.5: ʿArīb; §6.7: an anonymous slave; §7.3: Bidʿah; §13.3; §13.5; §13.6; §13.9; §14.2: Faḍl; §15.3; §15.4; §15.5; §15.6: Maḥbūbah; §19.2; §19.3: Nabt.

      52 §3.5; §3.7.

      53 §6.5.

      54 Ibn al-Sāʿī cites Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī as the author of the Book of Songs, but Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī also wrote a book devoted to women slave poets, al-Imāʾ al-shawāʿir, extant and available in two editions, both from 1983, one edited by al-Qaysī and al-Sāmarrāʾī (paginated), the other edited by al-ʿAṭiyyah (numbered). The texts of the two editions are not identical, but of our “consorts,” both have: ʿInān (pages 23–44/no. 1); Faḍl (49–71/no. 3); Haylānah (95–96/no. 14); ʿArīb (99–112/no. 16); Maḥbūbah (117–20/no. 20); Banān/Bunān (121–22/no. 21); Nabt (129–31/no. 25); Bidʿah (139–141/no. 29). These references are given here because al-Imāʾ al-shawāʿir is not among the otherwise comprehensive list of sources cited in Jawād’s footnotes to Jihāt al-aʾimmah. (For a more recent edition of al-Iṣfahānī’s book, titled Riyy al-ẓamā fī-man qāla al-shiʿr fī l-imā, see Primary Sources in the bibliography.)

      55 §13.4; §7.3; §7.4.

      56 According to Ibn al-Sāʿī, Hārūn al-Rashīd married Ghādir (§2.1); we find the identical story in Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, 8: 349, but al-Ṭabarī does not list her among Hārūn’s wives (The ʿAbbāsid Caliphate in Equilibrium, 326–27). Farīdah the Younger is said to have married al-Mutawakkil (§18.3); in the Book of Songs, in the joint entry on Farīdah the Elder and Farīdah the Younger, Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (Kitāb al-Aghānī, 3:183), cites al-Ṣūlī as the authority for this; again, the “marriage” is not mentioned elsewhere. There is a question mark over these stories: the jurists would certainly have disapproved of a free man marrying