[3][4][5] The work of medieval Arabic-language women poets has not been preserved as extensively as that of men, but a substantial corpus nonetheless survives; the earliest extensive anthology is the late ninth-century CE Balāghāt al-nisāʾ by Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr (d.
[7] That much literature by women was once collected in writing but has since been lost is suggested particularly by the fact that al-Suyuti's 15th-century Nuzhat al-julasāʼ fī ashʻār al-nisāʼ mentions a large (six-volume or longer) anthology called Akhbar al-Nisa' al-Shau‘a'ir containing "ancient" women’s poetry, assembled by one Ibn al-Tarrah (d. 720/1320).
[8] Medieval women's poetry in Arabic tends to be in two genres: the rithā’ (elegy) and ghazal (love-song), alongside a smaller body of Sufi poems and short pieces in the low-status rajaz metre.
[9] One significant corpus comprises poems by qiyan, women who were slaves highly trained in the arts of entertainment,[10] often educated in the cities of Basra, Ta’if, and Medina.
Rābiʿah’s biography in particular projects a paradoxical persona that embodies the complementary opposites of sexuality and saintliness.