Citing one of his key sources, Ibn al-Mu‘tazz, Abū ’l-Faraj refers to a collection of notebooks (dafātir) and loose sheets (ṣuḥuf) containing her songs.
[8]Born in Baghdad, Iraq, ‘Arīb was rumoured in the Middle Ages to be the daughter of vizier Ja'far al-Barmaki, a key member of the Barmakids, and one of the family's domestic servants, Fāṭima.
‘Arīb's own poetry twice protests at her servile status, and she was manumitted by Abū Isḥāq al-Mu‘taṣim (r. 833–842).
One of the most famous stories attached to her concerns a singing contest in which she and her singing-girls won against her younger rival Shāriyah and her troupe.
[11] The evidence suggests a figure who was 'willful, deeply intelligent, impatient with those of lesser wits and, perhaps inevitably, bemused and often cynical'.