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

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

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

al-Andalus Al-Andalus () was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula. The name refers to the different Muslim states that controlled these territories at various times between 711 and 1492. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied most o ...

, and, along with Sarah of Yemen and the anonymous wife of

Dunash ben Labrat Dunash ha-Levi ben Labrat (920/925 – after 985) (; ) was a medieval Jewish commentator, poet, and grammarian of the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain. He is known for his philological commentary, ''Teshuvot Dunash'', and for his liturgical ...

, 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 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

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 calls him Ismāʿil ''al-Yahudi'' "the Jew," al-Suyuti calls him Ismāʿil ibn Bagdāla al-Yahudi, and says Qasmūna lived in the

12th century The 12th century is the period from 1101 to 1200 in accordance with the Julian calendar. In the history of European culture, this period is considered part of the High Middle Ages and overlaps with what is often called the Golden Age' of the ...

. It has been speculated that Qasmūna's father was

Samuel ibn Naghrillah Shmuel ibn Naghrillah (; ), mainly known as Shmuel HaNagid () and Isma'il ibn Naghrilla (993–1056), was a Jewish statesman, military commander, scholar, linguist and poet in medieval al-Andalus. He served as grand vizier of the Taifa of Granada ...

(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 Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (; 1445–1505), or al-Suyuti, was an Egyptians, Egyptian Sunni Muslims, Muslim polymath of Persians, Persian descent. Considered the mujtahid and mujaddid of the Islamic 10th century, he was a leading Hadith studies, muh ...

, in his fifteenth-century ''Nuzhat al-julasāʼ fī ashʻār al-nisā'', an anthology of women's verse, and

Ahmad 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 schola ...

, 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-language writers Women poets from al-Andalus Poets from al-Andalus 12th-century Jews from al-Andalus 12th-century writers from al-Andalus 12th-century Spanish poets Medieval Jewish women Medieval Spanish women writers Jewish women writers Judeo-Arabic writers