Female Sexuality in the Early Medieval Islamic World by Pernilla Myrne;

Author:Pernilla Myrne; [Myrne, Pernilla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838605032
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2019-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

5

Sexual Comedy and Women’s Bodies

Duqāq was one of the famous Abbasid courtesans and an accomplished singer, trained by the most prominent teachers in the caliphate. According to Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī, she was lady-in-waiting for caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd’s daughter, princess Ḥamdūna, and then for Ḥamdūna’s mother Ghaḍīḍ, one of the caliph’s favourite concubines. She was a concubine herself, and belonged to a man called Yaḥyā ibn al-Rabīʿ. She gave birth to his son Aḥmad, which meant that she was freed when Yaḥyā died and after that, she married several times and inherited parts of her husbands’ wealth, which made her a rich woman. For later generations, however, she became known for her alleged lewd behaviour. What we know about her comes from a few testimonies quoted by Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī in Kitāb al-Aghānī.1 Aḥmad ibn Ḥamdūn, a companion and courtier of caliph al-Mutawakkil, claimed that Duqāq once challenged his father Ḥamdūn, a companion of al-Rashīd, in a verbal duel.2 Duqāq sent Ḥamdūn a letter describing her own ‘thing’, supposedly in boastful terms; we do not know, as Abū al-Faraj did not quote this part. Ḥamdūn cannot have been unfamiliar with playful arguments, yet, apparently more prudish than the famous courtesan, he was incapable of answering and asked a friend for counsel. The friend advised him to let a mukhannath (transsexual) look at his ‘equipment’ and compose a poem about it, which he did with success; Duqāq was lost for an answer and Ḥamdūn won the challenge.3

The mukhannath’s prose poem is cited in Kitāb al-Aghānī; it depicts the genitals of Ibn Ḥamdūn’s father in rhymed prose, with amusing and slightly blasphemous metaphors, such as ‘a long, hideous trumpet, bald and plucked’, and ‘a minaret between two rocks’. Description of genitals, preferably in hyperbolic terms, was an established poetic motif long before Abū al-Faraj cited Ibn Ḥamdūn in Kitāb al-Aghānī. Yet, the implication of Ibn Ḥamdūn’s account is that Duqāq’s behaviour was unconventional, and that Ḥamdūn was too virtuous to lower himself to her level, but still won the duel. The fact that Duqāq’s contribution is not cited in Kitāb al-Aghānī indicates that women describing their genitalia was too embarrassing for Abū al-Faraj and his sources. Abū al-Faraj usually defended the art of music and its practitioners, and was perhaps anxious about the reputation of the women in the field. He was not above retelling slander, however; he and earlier generations of scholars, poets and courtiers in Baghdad were less prudish about Duqāq’s supposed lewd behaviour.

According to Abū al-Faraj and his sources, Duqāq was widowed several times, her husbands were all military commanders and high officials, who, the sources insinuate, died because of her. ʿĪsā ibn Zaynab, a poet at the time of al-Maʾmūn and al-Muʿtaṣim, accused her vagina for the death of three husbands:

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