sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

than a mule needs two mills.” Both men stood speechless in front of her and the narrator of the story
never tells us if they finally managed to sell some clothes or not. 9
This very saying must have been very popular in that time. In another khabar it is said that
Danānīr, another great prima donna of the Abbasid era, wrote with her own hands on a wall outside a
house in the city of Mecca: “Fornication consists in four things: the first one is the burning desire, the
second one is tasting the pleasure, the third one is the satisfaction of the desire and the fourth one is
the illness. And a vagina needs two penises more than a penis needs two vaginas.” 10
The celebrated songstress ‘Arīb was also particularly free‐spoken. One day, she was visited by
Abū l‐‘Anbas, the gifted humorist and man of letters of the Abbasid court, and she invited him and
his friends to share with her a delicious meal and some music. Abū l‐‘Anbas replied that he would
accept the invitation on one condition. ‘Arīb asked him what that was and he answered: “It is
something that I have always wanted to know about you but was afraid to ask you.” ‘Arīb imagined
what that question could be, and she hurried to ask him if it was about her “requirements”, meaning
her sexual preferences. Indeed, he confirmed that that was the matter, so ‘Arīb resolved his
indiscreet doubts with all sincerity: “My requirements are: a strong penis and a pleasant odor. And if,
in addition to this, there is kindness and beauty, then that power increases inside of me. If not, those
are the two things that are definitely indispensable for me.” 11
In another khabar, it is related that in a music event (majlis) in which ‘Arīb sang accompanied by
her group of jawārī mughanniyāt, somebody mentioned a statement that she had made about her
sexual life with the caliphs: “I have slept with seven [caliphs] and I have never missed anybody of
them except al‐Mu‘tazz.” And then the same man asked one of his hosts: “And how is her sexual
appetite (shahwa) now?” ‘Arīb noticed that they were talking about her, and she threatened them
that she would dismiss her jawārī if she was not told what their comments were about. So they
finally had to tell her the truth and she answered: “My sexual appetite remains the same, although
the instrument itself has expired.” 12
This kind of expressivity about sexual matters was not exceptional in early Islamic culture. 13 The
word that describes this attitude is “mujūn.” 14 This very term indicates, in general, the concepts of
libertinism and obscenity, and it was even used to define the licentious poems of the epoch, the socalled
“mujūniyyāt”, whose greatest exponent was the poet Abū Nuwās. 15
Furthermore, it seems that those hilarious and often hyperbolic expressions of sexuality
constituted one of the important components of the majālis, the literary and musical events in which
male and female singers, as well as poets, entertained the noble circles of the epoch. In the Umayyad
era, the great lord of those events was the caliph al‐Walīd b. Yazīd, renowned for his dissolute life. Al‐
Walīd used to invite different artists to his majālīs. One of them was the multifaceted entertainer
Ash‘ab. One day, Ash‘ab entered the caliph’s palace, in order to join one of his music events, and he
found himself before the following grotesque spectacle: the caliph had revealed his member in front
of everybody and was now asking Ash‘ab to make three reverences before his erection. Then the
caliph asked him if he had ever seen something like that before, and when Ash‘ab assured him that
he had not, the music went on, and a mughanniya (songstress) was asked to sing for them as if
nothing had happened. But the story did not end there: when the girl was singing, al‐Walīd got angry
with one of his julasā’ (companions) because he kept talking and talking during her performance. The
idea that the caliph came up with, in order to punish that naughty friend, was to ask him to kiss his
member. The man finally carried out that order and al‐Walīd burst into laughter. 16
In the Abbasid era, that role of the lord of the majālis par excellence fell on the legendary caliph
Hārūn al‐Rashīd. The Kitāb al‐Aghānī is replete with anecdotes about his social and personal life, in
which slave‐girls occupied a significant place. Those akhbār are hugely important for the study of