A Jariya’s Prospects in Abbasid Baghdad
The chapter takes up several related questions surrounding slave women in Abbasid culture. It considers the image of the jawari (slave women) in modern scholarship, arguing for a cautious approach to the Arabic sources. It also looks at elite women’s relations to slave women, and the manner in which the dichotomy of free/slave intersected with gender in shaping Abbasid social hierarchies. The career of the slave poet Inan al-Natifi illustrates both the vulnerabilities and possibilities inherent to the lives of jawari. Her main biographer is Abu al-Faraj al-Isbahani, who accords her the first and longest biographical entry in al-Ima al-Shawa’ir (The Female Slave Poets), and an entry in the Kitab al-Aghani (The Book of Songs).