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

Khayzuran: Courtesan or Head of State? 55
mastery of the arts. So education of jawari became a veritable
institution which brought solid rewards to those who engaged in it.
And it was during the reigns of al-Mahdi and his father that the
education of jawari took on unprecedented importance. One of
their contemporaries, Ibrahim al-Mawsili, a master of Arab music
and song who frequented the court of the two caliphs, was 'the first
to begin to instruct the beautiful jawari', 12 and to give them an
elaborate education in poetry, music, and singing. He had, al-
Isbahani tells us, 'a regular school with 80 resident students in
training with him, in addition to his own'. 13 Ishaq, the son of
Ibrahim al-Mawsili, continued his father's work under the sons of
Khayzuran. Harun al-Rashid bought from him a number of his
student jawari, and their price was so high that he had to bargain
very hard with the great artists who organized his evening parties
after battles. 14 Ibrahim al-Mawsili and his son were of Persian
origin. They not only infused music and song with new rhythms and
melodies from their own culture and from that of the foreign
slaves, but they also larded poetry and song with Persian words and
concepts. Sharya, a jarya bought by Ibrahim, another son of Caliph
al-Mahdi, who declared himself an artist despite being a prince,
cost 300 dinars when he bought her. He had her given lessons for
a year, during which she was exempted from all domestic work.
She devoted herself to study and practice. At the end of a year he
called in the experts to evaluate her, and they told him that if he
put her on the market she would be worth 8,000 dinars, that is 26
times her original price. 15 Some years later a would-be buyer heard
of her and her incredible talent and offered 70,000 dinars for her,
that is, 233 times her original price. Prince Ibrahim Ibn al-Mahdi
obviously declined the offer. We can understand that for Khayzuran
competition came from the jawari and not from al-Mahdi's aristocratic
wife, whom she had stripped of all her prerogatives, including
the right to have her sons named royal heirs.
Khayzuran's coup d'&at, if I may call it that, was to induce al-
Mahdi to have her children designated as heirs apparent and those
of the other women excluded. Among those excluded were the
children of al-Mahdi's aristocratic wife and cousin Rayta, a princess
of royal descent, the daugher of Caliph al-Saffah, the founder of
the dynasty, whom he had married in 144/762. A century earlier
the first Umayyads 'did not permit sons of slaves to become caliph'. 16
The sovereign could only be the son of a free woman. Hisham Ibn
'Abd al-Malik, the tenth Umayyad caliph (105/724-125/743), is
supposed to have said to Zayd Ibn 'Ali, a pretender to the throne: