Medieval Arabic female poets

In the surviving historical record, Medieval Arabic female poets are few compared with the number of known male Arabic-language poets: there has been 'an almost total eclipse of women's poetic expression in the literary record as maintained in Arabic culture from the pre-Islamic era through the nineteenth century'. However, there is evidence that, compared with medieval Europe, women's poetry in the medieval Islamic world was 'unparalleled' in 'visibility and impact'. Accordingly, recent scholars emphasise that women's contribution to Arabic literature requires greater scholarly attention.

Their work 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. According to Samer M. Ali,

The work of medieval Arabic-language women poets has not been preserved as extensively as that of men, but a substantial corpus nonetheless survives. Abd al-Amīr Muhannā named over four hundred female poets in his anthology. 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 fifteenth-century Nuzhat al-julasāʼ fī ashʻār al-nisāʼ mentions a large (six-volume or longer) anthology called Akhhar al-Nisa' al-Shau‘a'ir containing 'ancient' women’s poetry, assembled by one Ibn al-Tarrah (d. 720/1320). However, a range of medieval anthologies do contain women's poetry, including collections by Al-Jahiz, Abu Tammam, Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, and Ibn Bassam, alongside historians quoting women's poetry such as Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Yaqut al-Hamawi, and Ibn 'Asakir.

The following list of known women poets is based on Abdullah al-Udhari's Classical Poems by Arab Women. It is not complete.

(797–890 CE)

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