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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad

Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad

Al-Sāʿī, Ibn
Toorawa, Shawkat M.
Literature, The Editors of the Library of Arabic

Hardcover

Series: Library of Arabic Literature, Book 2

Biographies GeneralFiction AnthologiesGeneral Middle Eastern History

ISBN10: 1479850985
ISBN13: 9781479850983
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: May 15 2015
Pages: 272
Weight: 1.23
Height: 1.30 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

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.

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