Ḥafṣa bint al-Ḥājj ar-Rakūniyya (حفصة بنت الحاج الركونية, born c. 1135, died AH 586/1190–91 CE) was a
Granadan aristocrat and perhaps one of the most celebrated
Andalusian female poets of medieval Arabic literature.
Biography
We know little about Ḥafṣa's origins and early life. Sources do not tell us when she was born, but her birth must have been in or after AH 530/1135.[1] She was the daughter of a Berber man, al-Hajj ar-Rukuni, a Granadan, who does not seem to have left traces among biographers. This family was noble and rich. We can therefore consider the father of Hafsa a notable figure in the city.[1] Around the time that the
Almohads came to power in 1154, Ḥafṣa seems to have begun a relationship with the poet
Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik Ibn Saʿīd; to judge from the surviving poetry, Ḥafṣa initiated the affair.[2] With this, Ḥafṣa enters the historical record more clearly; the relationship seems to have continued until Abū Jaʿfar's execution in 1163 by Abū Saʿīd ʿUthmān, son of
Abd al-Mu'min and governor of Granada: Abū Jaʿfar had sided with his extended family, the Banu Saʿid, against Adb al-Muʿmin.
Ḥafṣa later became known as a teacher, working for Caliph
Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur to educate his daughters in
Marrakesh. She died there in 1190 or 1191. She is perhaps one of the most celebrated
Andalusian female poets of medieval Arabic literature.[3]
Poetry
Around 60 lines of Ḥafṣa's poetry survive, among nineteen compositions, making Ḥafṣa the best attested of the medieval female Moorish poets (ahead of
Wallada bint al-Mustakfi and
Nazhun al-Garnatiya bint al-Qulai’iya). Her verse encompasses love poetry, elegy, panegyric, satirical, and even obscene verse, giving her work unusual range. Perhaps her most famous exchange is a response to Abū Jaʿfar, here as translated by A. J. Arberry:[4]
Abu Jaafar the poet was in love with Hafsa, and sent her the following poem:
^Arie Schippers, 'The Role of Women in Medieval Andalusian Arabic Story-Telling', in Verse and the Fair Sex: Studies in Arabic Poetry and in the Representation of Women in Arabic Literature. A Collection of Papers Presented at the Fifteenth Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et des Islamisants (Utrecht/Driebergen, September 13-19, 1990), ed. by Frederick de Jong (Utrecht: Publications of the M. Th. Houstma Stichting, 1993), pp. 139-51 at 149;
http://dare.uva.nl/document/184872.
^Moorish Poetry: A Translation of ’The Pennants’, an Anthology Compiled in 1243 by the Andalusian Ibn Saʿid, trans. by A. J. Arberry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), pp. 94–95. For the original see El libro de las banderas de los campeones, de Ibn Saʿid al-Magribī, ed. by Emilio García Gómez (Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, 1942), p. 61.
Sources
Al-Mallah, Majd (6 April 2020). "Voice and Power: Ḥafṣah bint al-Ḥājj and the Poetics of Women in Al-Andalus". Journal of Arabic Literature. 51 (1–2): 1–26.
doi:
10.1163/1570064x-12341397.
Moorish Poetry: A Translation of ’The Pennants’, an Anthology Compiled in 1243 by the Andalusian Ibn Saʿid, trans. by A. J. Arberry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), pp. 94–95.
Arie Schippers, 'The Role of Women in Medieval Andalusian Arabic Story-Telling', in Verse and the Fair Sex: Studies in Arabic Poetry and in the Representation of Women in Arabic Literature. A Collection of Papers Presented at the Fifteenth Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et des Islamisants (Utrecht/Driebergen, September 13-19, 1990), ed. by Frederick de Jong (Utrecht: Publications of the M. Th. Houstma Stichting, 1993), pp. 139-51
http://dare.uva.nl/document/184872.
Marlé Hammon, 'Hafsa Bint al-Hajj al Rukuniyya', in Medieval Islamic Civilisation: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Josef W. Meri, 2 vols (New York: Routledge, 2006), I 308.
Marla Segol, 'Representing the Body in Poems by Medieval Muslim Women', Medieval Feminist Forum, 45 (2009), 147-69:
https://doi.org/10.17077/1536-8742.1773.