Inan bint Abdallah

{{Infobox writer

| honorific_prefix =

| name = Inan bint Abdallah
عنان بنت عبد الله

| honorific_suffix =

| image =

| image_size =

| image_upright =

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| pseudonym = Inan

| birth_date =

| birth_place =

| death_date = c. 810 or 841

| death_place = Iraq

| resting_place = Iraq

| occupation = Arabic Poet

| language = Arabic

| nationality = Abbasid Caliphate

| period = Islamic Golden Age
(Abbasid era)

}}

{{ayin}}Inān bint {{ayin}}Abdallāh ({{langx|ar|عنان بنت عبد الله}}, died 841)Classical Poems by Arab Women: A Bilingual Anthology, ed. and trans. by Abdullah al-Udhari (London: Saqi Books, 1999), p. 124. was a prominent poet and qiyan of the Abbasid period, even characterised by the tenth-century historian Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahāni as the slave-woman poet of foremost significance in the Arabic tradition.Fuad Matthew Caswell, The Slave Girls of Baghdad: The 'Qiyān' in the Early Abbasid Era (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), p. 56. She was later the concubine of Harun al-Rashid.

Biography

{{ayin}}Inān was born a muwallada (daughter of an Arab father and slave mother) to {{ayin}}Abd-Allāh.Ibn al-Sā{{ayin}}ī, Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad, ed. by Shawkat M. Toorawa, trans. by the Editors of the Library of Arabic Literature (New York: New York University Press, 2015), p. 11. To her appearance, she was described as a Blonde.Ibn al-Sāʿī:[https://books.google.com/books?id=d7-SDgAAQBAJ Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad] She was trained in Yamamah. She was sold to Abū Khālid al-Nāṭifī, who brought her to Baghdad.Fuad Matthew Caswell, The Slave Girls of Baghdad: The 'Qiyān' in the Early Abbasid Era (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), pp. 56-57.

In the assessment of Fuad Matthew Caswell,

Her salon at the house of al-Nāṭifī was frequented by the celebrated poets and men of letters of the time, including Abū Nuwās, Di{{ayin}}bil al-Khuzā{{ayin}}ī, Marwān b. Abī Ḥafṣa, al-ʽAbbās b. al-Aḥnaf and al-Ma’mūn's tutor al-Yazīdī al-Ḥimyarī, among a host of others, one of the attractions being that her master was devoid of jealously and tolerated the ease with which she bestowed her favours.

{{ayin}}Inān's fame led Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd to seek to buy her to include her in the Abbasid harem, but he refused al-Nāṭifī's asking price of 100,000 dīnārs. However, on al-Nāṭifī's death, al-Rashīd had {{ayin}}Inān put up for auction, ostensibly to help clear al-Nāṭifī's debts. Via an agent, al-Rashīd then acquired her for 225,000 dirhams (in that time 1 dinar was equal to 7 dirhams). As al-Rashīd's concubine, {{ayin}}Inān bore him two sons, both of whom died young. She accompanied him to Khurāsān where he, and, soon after, she died.Fuad Matthew Caswell, The Slave Girls of Baghdad: The 'Qiyān' in the Early Abbasid Era (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), pp. 73-81.

Work

{{ayin}}Inān was noted for her rapier-like repartee, which was often sexual or even vulgar in tone, and this will have been an important aspect of her fame/infamy.Fuad Matthew Caswell, The Slave Girls of Baghdad: The 'Qiyān' in the Early Abbasid Era (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), p. 63. A large part of her surviving corpus comprises her responses to male poets' challenges in verse-capping contests. A significant proportion of her surviving verse is dialogue with the famed poet Abū Nuwās.Fuad Matthew Caswell, The Slave Girls of Baghdad: The 'Qiyān' in the Early Abbasid Era (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), p. 64-76.

Example

As rendered by Eric Ormsby, one of the virtuosic yet obscene exchanges between {{ayin}}Inān and Abū Nuwās runs thus:Eric Ormsby, '[http://parnassusreview.com/archives/392 Questions for stones: On classical Arabic Poetry] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211209154837/http://parnassusreview.com/archives/392 |date=2021-12-09 }}', Parnassus: Poetry in Review, 25 (2001), 18-39.

One day she asked him whether he was any good at scansion; when Abu Nuwas replied boastfully that he was superb at it, she said, "Try scanning this verse:

::I ate Syrian mustard on a baker's platter...

::(akaltu {{ayin}}l-khardalah sh-shā’mi fī ṣafḥati khabbāzī...)

Abu Nuwas broke the line into metrical feet and responded:

::Akaltu {{ayin}}l-khar...ti-tum ti-tum

which means:

::I ate some shit ti-tum ti-tum...

The assembled courtiers broke into loud laughter at the poet's expense. Not to be outdone, he asked {{ayin}}Inān whether she could scan the following (rather nonsensical) verse:

::Keep your church far from us, O sons of the wood-carrier...!

::(ḥawwilū {{ayin}}annā kanīsatakum yā banī ḥammālati l-ḥaṭabi...)

She too had to break up the metrical feet to produce:

::ḥawwilū {{ayin}}an tum-ti tum-ti nākanī....

which comes out as

::Keep away tum-ti-tum-ti he has fucked me...

Editions and translations

Ibn al-Sā{{ayin}}ī, Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad, ed. by Shawkat M. Toorawa, trans. by the Editors of the Library of Arabic Literature (New York: New York University Press, 2015), pp. 11–19 (edition and translation of one medieval anthology)
Fuad Matthew Caswell, The Slave Girls of Baghdad: The 'Qiyān' in the Early Abbasid Era (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), pp. 56–81 (extensive quotation of translated poems)