Gender and Poetry in Muslim Spain: Mapping the Sexual-Textual Politics of Al–Andalus

Abstract

This article revisits the role of women in the Andalusian literature and culture of the period between the 8 th through the 15 th centuries C.E. Drawing on some Western sexual-textual political models of analysis, the article reexamines the literary methods and devices employed by selected Andalusian women poets to demonstrate their intellectual equality with men. Moreover, by providing a sexual-textual political reading of some of the women's poems and/or the anecdotes (akhbār) about them, the article demonstrates how these women exerted their social and political agency in a male-dominated society. The article seeks to bolster an argument that the frequent mention of the preponderance of women poets—their names and the anecdotes about them— suggests the existence of a female literary sub-culture in al-Andalus that was more vibrant than has been documented in the male-authored classical Arabic texts.