Qasmūna bint Ismāʿil (; ), sometimes called Xemone, was an Iberian

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

poet. She is the only female Arabic-language Jewish poet attested from medieval

Andalusia Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a "historical nationality". The t ...

, and, along with

Sarah of Yemen Sarah of Yemen ( ar, سارة, fl. 6th century CE) is noted as one of the small number of Arabic-language female poets known for the sixth century CE. It is possible that she was Jewish,Emily Taitz, Sondra Henry, and Cheryl Tallan, 'Sarah of Yemen', ...

and the anonymous wife of Dunash ben Labrat, one of few known female Jewish poets throughout the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

Biography

Little is known about Qasmūna's life. Both surviving sources say that her father was Jewish and that he taught her the art of verse. Whereas al-Maqqari simply calls him Ismāʿil al-Yahudi, however, al-Suyuti calls him Ismāʿil ibn Bagdāla al-Yahudi, and says Qasmūna lived in the twelfth century CE. It has been speculated that Qasmūna's father was Samuel ibn Naghrillah (d. ), or that Samuel was otherwise an ancestor, which would make Qasmuna an eleventh-century rather than a twelfth-century poet, but the foundations for these claims are shaky. Three poems by Qasmūna survive, due to being recorded by two later anthologists: Al-Suyuti, in his fifteenth-century ''Nuzhat al-julasāʼ fī ashʻār al-nisā'', an anthology of women's verse, and

Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Maqqarī al-Tilmisānī (or al-Maḳḳarī) (), (1577-1632) was an Algerian scholar, biographer and historian who is best known for his , a compendium of the history of Al-Andalus which provided a basis for the scholar ...

, in his seventeenth-century ''Nafḥ al-ṭīb''. Al-Suyuti, and conceivably also al-Maqqari, seems to have derived the material from an earlier anthology of Andalusian verse, the ''Kitāb al-Maghrib'' by Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi; but it seems that the verses do not appear in surviving manuscripts of that work.

Works

Three poems by Qasmūna are known.

1

One is part of a verse-capping challenge set by Qasmūna's father. As edited and translated by Nichols, he begins: To which Qasmūna replies: The missing word in this verse is assumed to be a word denoting a woman of some kind.

2

The most famous of Qasmūna's poems, widely anthologised, is introduced by the comment that she looked in the mirror one day and saw that she was beautiful and had reached the time of marriage. She then utters this verse:

3

The last of Qasmūna's known poems runs:

References

{{authority control Arabic-language women poets Arabic-language poets Medieval Jewish poets 12th-century women writers 12th-century Arabic writers Women poets of Al-Andalus 12th-century Jews of Al-Andalus 12th-century poets Medieval Jewish women Medieval Spanish women writers 12th-century Spanish writers Jewish women writers Judeo-Arabic writers