Sarah of Yemen (Arabic: سارة, fl. 6th century CE) is noted as one of the small number of Arabic-language female poets known for the sixth century CE. It is possible that she was Jewish,[1] in which case she is one of only three attested female medieval Jewish poets (the others being the anonymous, tenth-century wife of Dunash ben Labrat and the probably twelfth-century Qasmuna).[2]

The poem attributed to her survives in the tenth-century anthology named Kitab al-Aghani:[1]

The eulogy implies that Sarah was a member of the Banu Qurayza, commenting on their defeat by Muslims around 627. Little more is known about Sarah, but she 'reputedly participated in a guerrilla action against Muhammad before a Muslim agent killed her.'[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Emily Taitz, Sondra Henry, and Cheryl Tallan, 'Sarah of Yemen', in The JPS Guide to Jewish Women: 600 B.C.E. to 1900 C.E. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2003), p. 58.
  2. ↑ The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, ed. and trans. by Peter Cole (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 27, 364.
  3. ↑ Ed. by Theodor Nöldeke, Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Poesie der alten Araber (Hannover: Rümpler, 1864), pp. 53-54.
  4. ↑ Quoted by Emily Taitz, Sondra Henry, and Cheryl Tallan, 'Sarah of Yemen', in The JPS Guide to Jewish Women: 600 B.C.E. to 1900 C.E. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2003), p. 59.
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