Ḥafṣa bint al-Ḥājj ar-Rakūniyya (حفصة بنت الحاج الركونية, born c. 1135, died AH 586/1190–91 CE) was a Granadan aristocrat and perhaps one of the most celebrated Andalusian female poets of medieval Arabic literature.
[1] She was the daughter of a Berber man, al-Hajj ar-Rukuni, a Granadan, who does not seem to have left traces among biographers.
[1] Around the time that the Almohads came to power in 1154, Ḥafṣa seems to have begun a relationship with the poet Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik Ibn Saʿīd; to judge from the surviving poetry, Ḥafṣa initiated the affair.
Ḥafṣa later became known as a teacher, working for Caliph Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur to educate his daughters in Marrakesh.
[3] Around 60 lines of Ḥafṣa's poetry survive, among nineteen compositions, making Ḥafṣa the best attested of the medieval female Moorish poets (ahead of Wallada bint al-Mustakfi and Nazhun al-Garnatiya bint al-Qulai’iya).