sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

QIYĀN AND SEXUALITY: THE SINGING‐SLAVE‐GIRLS’ LOVE LIFE
ACCORDING TO THE KITĀB AL‐AGHĀNĪ
Mika PARASKEVA*
The Kitāb al‐Aghānī [The Book of Songs] is a multivolume collection of poems, songs and
anecdotes compiled by the renowned Arab scholar Abū l‐Faraj al‐Iṣfahānī in the fourth century of the
Islamic era (10 th c. a. D.). Its anecdotes (akhbār) constitute one of the most important sources for the
study of qiyān’s lives.
Qiyān or jawārī mughanniyāt (in singular: qayna and jāriya mughanniya, respectively) are the
brilliant singing‐girls of the medieval Arab world. In the golden era of the Islamic world, most of them
were physically attractive and highly educated slaves, for which reasons they were sold at exorbitant
prices to wealthy people, mostly men. They lived their lives alongside these men, performing two
main roles: musicians and lovers.
Certainly, their artistic qualities were very important, but in this very paper we will only focus on
their love life. According to Islamic law, the slave‐girls were only permitted to have sexual relations
with their masters (or their husbands, in the exceptional case in which they were allowed to get
married to a man other than their master). As for their masters, they could be of three different
kinds:
I. Slave traders that bought them in order to educate them and then sell them at notably high
prices. Those people were called “muqayyinūn”, as they were specialized in that particular production
and trade of qiyān. Although they had the right to have sexual relations with the girls, we tend to
believe that sometimes they did not act on this right, probably because their slaves’ virginity was an
important issue at the moment of their sale.
II. Men who were moved to buy them because of a feeling of attraction or admiration for them.
Once bought, the girls were obliged to offer them artistic and sexual pleasure.
III. Distinguished musicians that had their own court of singers. The behavior of this class of
masters combined different features. Sometimes, they bought the girls and spent their whole lives
with them, enjoying their presence; other times, they did business with the girls, just like muqayyinūn
did. Therefore, in this third case, masters were free to act one way or another, according to their
sexual desires, to the kind of relationship that they had with a specific girl and, of course, to their own
professional convenience.
In the Kitāb al‐Aghānī the heroes are usually very keen on knowing whether a slave‐girl has had
sexual relations with her master, or even other men, especially when she has to pass from one master
to another. For those cases, Islamic law provided the principle of “istibrā’.” According to a definition
found in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, this term means “the period of sexual abstinence imposed on an
unmarried female slave whenever she changed hands or her master set her free or gave her in
marriage.” 1 Apart from this specific definition, the term tends to indicate, in general, the period of a
woman’s purification after she is separated from her master or husband for any reason: death, sale or
repudiation. The objective of “istibrā’” is, obviously, the necessity to verify if a woman is in a state of
pregnancy or not.
In one of the akhbār coming from the Umayyad era, it is said that the caliph al‐Walīd b. Yazīd (al‐
Walīd II) met the musician Daḥmān on one of his trips and enjoyed his music as well as his singing
slave‐girl’s performance. The caliph bought from Daḥmān that jāriya that sang for him and took her
*
University of Granada.