Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

40 Queens and Courtesans
development of these arts. Abu al-Faraj al-Isbahani was writing a
history of art, not of power, and jawari like Hababa are presented
to us in a very different light.
Good Muslims that they were, Mas'udi and Tabari could only see
Hababa as a slave who led the caliph astray. It is interesting to note
that the historians held Yazid II in such contempt for publicly
loving a jarya that they never paid tribute to him for his innovative
approach to practical politics, passing over in silence his attempts
at dialogue with the opposition. While until the time of his predecessor
harsh treatment, even death, was the traditional mode of
treatment of political opponents, Yazid II, a peacemaker, encouraged
dialogue and opened negotiations with those who challenged
and opposed him - not a trifling achievement. Although similar
initiatives won praise for his predecessor, 'Umar Ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz,
the first Umayyad caliph to renounce killing the Shi'ite opponents
and to inaugurate dialogue with them, there was no praise for
Yazid, who nevertheless continued his policy. Yazid was consistently
regarded as a degenerate and incompetent in political matters.
Rereading Muslim history today with a modern outlook and the
preoccupations of our time, namely democracy and human rights,
makes one think about what our historians call 'a great head of
state'.
Another sovereign, who was categorized as great and outstanding,
carried his 'duty as a good Muslim sovereign' to the extent of killing
the jarya he loved, claiming that his passion for her was in flagrant
contradiction to his political mission. Let me add that he was not
an Arab, for seeing the conflict between amorous passion and
political performance in such extreme terms is certainly foreign
to Arab Islam as it was preached and practised by the Prophet
Muhammad. 10 The person in question was Adud al-Dawla (338/949
to 372/982), the second sovereign of the Shi'ite dynasty of the
Buyids, who reigned over Baghdad in the fourth century of the
Hejira. At that time the power of the Abbasid caliph was only
nominal and symbolic. The Buyids, an Iranian dynasty, were aristocratic
military men who took power locally, first in Persia, where
they became established as the secular authority. Although they
were Shi'ites, when they entered Baghdad as a military force, they
respected the symbolic prerogatives of the Abbasid caliph, who was
Sunni. He gave them titles; they accorded him the military protection
he needed. The enthronement rituals of the secular leader by
the caliph, the leading of Friday prayers, and other ceremonies
allowed this rather bizarre marriage between religion and the mili-