Sarah of Yemen

Sarah of Yemen (Arabic: سارة, fl. 6th century CE) is noted as one of the small number of female composters of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry known from the sixth century CE. It is possible that she was Jewish,^[1] in which case she is one of only three attested female medieval Jewish poets (the others being the anonymous, tenth-century wife of Dunash ben Labrat and the probably twelfth-century Qasmuna).^[2]

The poem attributed to her survives in the tenth-century anthology named Kitab al-Aghani:^[1]

بنفسي أُمّةٌ لم تُفْنِ شبِأً * بذي حُرُضٍ تَعقّبُها الرِياحُ
كُهولٌ من قُرَيْظةَ اتلفتْها * سيوفُ الخَزْرَجيِّة والرماح
رُزدنا والرزيئةُ ذاتُ ثِقْلٍ * بَمُرّ لاملِها املاءُ القَراح
ولو أَربوا بامرهمِ لجالت * هنالك دونهم جَأوا رَداح^[3]

By my life, there is a people not long in Du Ḥurud, obliterated by the wind.
Men of Qurayza destroyed by Khazraji swords and lances,
We have lost, and our loss is so grave, it embitters for its people the pure water.
And had they been foreseeing, a teeming host would have reached there before them.^[4]

The eulogy implies that Sarah was a member of the Banu Qurayza, commenting on their defeat by Muslims around 627. Little more is known about Sarah, but she 'reputedly participated in a guerrilla action against Muhammad before a Muslim agent killed her.'^[1]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Emily Taitz, Sondra Henry, and Cheryl Tallan, 'Sarah of Yemen', in The JPS Guide to Jewish Women: 600 B.C.E. to 1900 C.E. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2003), p. 58.
^ The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, ed. and trans. by Peter Cole (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 27, 364.
^ Ed. by Theodor Nöldeke, Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Poesie der alten Araber (Hannover: Rümpler, 1864), pp. 53-54.
^ Quoted by Emily Taitz, Sondra Henry, and Cheryl Tallan, 'Sarah of Yemen', in The JPS Guide to Jewish Women: 600 B.C.E. to 1900 C.E. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2003), p. 59.

[:0-1] Emily Taitz, Sondra Henry, and Cheryl Tallan, 'Sarah of Yemen', in The JPS Guide to Jewish Women: 600 B.C.E. to 1900 C.E. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2003), p. 58.

[2] The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, ed. and trans. by Peter Cole (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 27, 364.

[3] Ed. by Theodor Nöldeke, Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Poesie der alten Araber (Hannover: Rümpler, 1864), pp. 53-54.

[4] Quoted by Emily Taitz, Sondra Henry, and Cheryl Tallan, 'Sarah of Yemen', in The JPS Guide to Jewish Women: 600 B.C.E. to 1900 C.E. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2003), p. 59.

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