Ḥamda bint Ziyād

Ḥamda bint Ziyād Al Muaddib was a twelfth-century Andalusian poet from Guadix,^[1] sister of Zaynab Bint Ziyād Al Muaddib,^[2] and described by the seventeenth-century diplomat Mohammed ibn abd al-Wahab al-Ghassani as 'one of the poetesses of the Andalus. She is famous in that region and among all the poets and poetesses of the country.'^[3] Her father was a teacher (mu'addib),^[4] and she is described as being one of 'the brotherless only daughters of well-off and cultured fathers who gave them the education that they would have given to their male children, if they had had any'.^[5] She is notable, inter alia, as one of relatively few named Moorish women poets.

Example

One example of Hamda's work is the poem referred to by A. J. Arberry as 'Beside a Stream', given here in his translation:^[6]

I sat beside a stream

Of loveliness supreme,

And with my tears expressed

The secrets of my breast.

A mead of emerald

About each river rolled,

And every meadow round

A silver river wound.

Among the shy gazelles

Ran lovely fawns, whose spells

Enslaved my mind, whose art

Bewitching stole my heart.

They lulled their eyes asleep

But for a purpose deep

Which (as true lover knows)

Denies me all repose.

They let their tresses fall

And there, as I recall,

Into the jet-black skies

I saw a moon arise.

The dawn, methinks, bereaved

Of so dear brother, grieved

For so sad loss, and so

Put on the garb of woe.

This can be compared with Nabil Matar's translation of the same poem:^[7]

Tears have betrayed my secrets in a wadi [valley] whose beauty is striking;

A river surrounds every meadow; and every meadow borders every wadi;

Among the gazelle, a black fawn stole my mind, after stealing my heart;

She desires to lie down for a reason, and that reason prevens my sleep;

When she loosens her tufts, I see the full moon in the black clouds,

As if the dawn had lost a brother, and in sorrow, clothed itself in mourning.

References