Sitt al-Ni‘m ست النعم Umm Ali Taqiyya bint Abi’l-Faraj Ghayth bin ‘Ali bin ‘Abd al-Salām | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1111 Damascus |
| Died | 1183/84 Egypt |
| Pen name | Sitt al-Ni‘m |
| Occupation | Arabic Poet |
| Language | Arabic |
| Period | Islamic Golden Age (Later Abbasid era) |
| Spouse | Fādl bin Ḥamdūn al-Ṣūrī |
| Children | Abu al-Hasan Ali |
Umm ‘Alī Taqiyya bint Abi’l-Faraj Ghayth b. ‘Alī b. ‘Abd al-Salām b. Muḥammad b. Ja‘far al-Sulamī al-Armanāzī al-Ṣūrī (أم علي تقية بنت أبى الفرج غيث بن على بن عبد السلام بن محمد بن جافر السلامية الأرمنازية الصورية), also known as Sitt al-Ni‘m (ست النعم) (505/1111 in Damascus 505/1111 – 570/1183–84, probably in Egypt), was a poet and scholar, the most prominent female student of Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī, the leading educator in Egypt in his day.
Several sources acknowledge her as woman of talent and wit, who composed qaṣīdas and short poems.'[1]
Taqiyya's husband was Fāḍil b. Ḥamdūn al-Ṣūrī (born Damascus 490/1097, died Alexandria 568/1172), himself a noted scholar; with him she had the son Abu’l-Ḥasan ‘Alī b. Fāḍil b. Ḥamdūn al-Ṣūrī (b. Ṣūr, d. 603/1206), who also became a noted scholar.
Among the few poems of Taqiyya's that survive is an epigram on wine the she sent to Al-Muzaffar Umar:
There is nothing good in wine, though a paradisial perk
It ferments the sane, bonkers his mind and instils in him a falling fear.
When al-Muzaffar responded that Taqiyya was speaking from experience, she composed a poem on war, to show that experience was not required to compose poetry on a theme.[2]
References
- ^ Delia Cortese, 'Transmitting sunnī learning in Fāṭimid Egypt: the female voices', in 26th Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants (UEAI 26), 12-16 Sep 2012, Basel, Switzerland, accessed from http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/13680/ (p. 14).
- ^ Classical Poems by Arab Women: A Bilingual Anthology, ed. and trans. by Abdullah al-Udhari (London: Saqi Books, 1999), p. 148.
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This page was last edited on 20 November 2023, at 17:11