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Updated 03-06-11
Khansa / al-Khansa /Tumadir bint
'Amr (c.575-c.646)
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"AND MANY A RHYME LIKE THE POINT OF A SPEAR, THEY STAY AND
WHOEVER SPOKE THEM GOES."
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Tumadir bint 'Amr ("bint" means "daughter of") is usually called Khansa; the name means "gazelle" to some translators, "snub-nosed" to others. She was one of the major poets of pre-Islamic Arabia (in the period Islamic scholars call the Jahiliyya). Her diwan (poetry collection), like those of her contemporaries, was carefully preserved by Islamic scholars who needed to study seventh century Arabic in order to explicate the Qur'an.
Khansa was a member of the Sharid clan of the Banu Sulaim people; as such, she was part of a powerful family of west central Arabia, near Mecca and Medina. Most of her poems are about her brothers, Sakhr and Muawiya, killed in tribal battles pre-dating Islam. Muawiya was killed first; then Sakhr was wounded in a revenge attempt and died of his wounds. Part of a woman poet's role was to mourn the dead in elegies performed for the tribe in public oral competitions; Khansa's laments made her famous throughout the Arab world.
Although the poems mention one husband and one child, some Islamic tradition says that she was married three times and had as many as seven children, that she met Muhammad in 629 and converted to Islam, and that her sons fought and died in the battles which spread Islam. Some modern scholars suggest that the references to Allah in some of the poems are later substitutions for the names of pagan gods. In either case, Khansa's own voice comes through clearly.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print.
Information about secondary sources.
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1. Poems in English translation (some are alternative versions of the same poem):
(a) In a 2005 essay on Khansa by Zainab Siddique, four complete poems ("What have we done to you death," "O my eyes, be generous," "Sakhr, you are making me cry now," and ""Time has gnawed at me"), as well as excerpts from other poems.
(b) In another essay on Khansa, a different Sakhr elegy, "The herald of the dead announced the loss," and the opening of one of the poems given above, followed by lines attributed to Khansa after conversion to Islam. (The drawing shown is one made by Kahlil Gibran in 1917.)
(c) Use your browser's search function to go to "Khansa" for yet another poem on Sahhr, "In the evening remembrance keeps me awake," translated by Alan Jones.
(d) "Sleepless I kept the night vigil," accompanied by the notes of the translator.
(e) Another version of the poem given just above, "My long night refused to give me the slightest sleep."
(f) In a 1998 article on Khansa, two passages from longer poems: "A bruised eye have I, or just a speck in it?" and "The she-camel losing its yearling."
(g) In an essay on early women Arab poets by Maureen Pemeberton, go to the second use of "Khansa" for two lines from a longer poem, "The rising and setting of the sun keep turning my memory"; the translation is by Abdullah al-Udhari.
(h) In a 1999 essay on Khansa by Faris Ali Al Mustafa, two lines from a longer poem, "My tears are abundant."
(i) Also from a longer poem, "Tears, ere thy death, for many a one I shed," translated by R. A. Nicholson.
2. A 2009 conference paper abstract by Cory Jorgensen, "Three
Blood Laments of Al-Khansa: Virtuosity in Performance,"
on Khansa's purpose in her laments for her brothers.
3. For historical background:
(a) In these lecture notes on Islam, click on "Jahiliyya: The Background to Islam" for a brief description of the period.
(b) A 2003 essay by Jonathan A.C. Brown, "The Social Context of Pre-Islamic Poetry: Poetic Imagery and Social Reality in the Mu c allaqat," which, although its chief focus is on a group of seven long poems written by men from c.550-c.630, describes the world in which Khansa lived.
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[The translation of Khansa's diwan by Arthur Wormhoudt presents 96 of her poems. Wormhoudt provides a brief foreword and helpful notes. This is is not a book to be found in all libraries, but you can get it via interlibrary loan:]
Diwan al Khansa / translated from the text of Karim Bustani
by Arthur Wormhoudt (Arab translation series; 1 [i.e. 5]). [Oskaloosa,
Iowa]: William Penn College, 1973. (108 p.)
LC#: PJ7696.K5 A28 1973
Published on demand by University Microfilms, University Microfilms
Limited, High Wycomb, England, a Xerox company, Ann Arbor, Michigan,
U.S.A. Photocopy of typescript.
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"Many a horseman...."
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[As in any predominantly oral society, the pre-Islamic poet was the historian of the group. The poems which describe the life of the tribe would remain to be recited long after the death of the poet. The words here are Wormhoudt's; some line-breaks are changed and punctuation added]
Many a horseman goes heavily in armor;
they attack with the sword their heroes.
And many a rhyme like the point of a spear
they stay and whoever spoke them goes.
[ll.13-16, p.84]
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"He was defender of every widow, raiser of all the fallen
with a plea."
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[Most of Khansa's poems mourn her brother Sakhr. As important as her personal loss is the loss to her tribe of their leaders. Here she speaks of getting word of Sakhr's death and tells her clan what they have lost:]
The caller came at night to Sufaina early
and told the death of Banu Amr's chief.
Protector of rights and defender
when the edge of time's evils was feared.
The tribe knows that his cookpot is early
on a windy morn or at night
when his cauldron shone and boiled.
What a fine lord of fire and pot.
Inform his servants that they [the enemy] destroyed
a lord who fed them and was not angry.
He suffices as their heat and endows them
with a hundred of the twenties and tens.
His jousting waters the heads of the spears
and horses wade in blood that flows.
He was defender of every widow,
raiser of all the fallen with a plea.
His gifts meet their families;
they overwhelm the rich and the poor.
[pp.36-7]
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"And Khansa weeps in the dark grief."
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[She describes the tribe's loss, and her own:]
As if Ibn Amr did not make a dawn raid
with horsemen nor use fine lean camels,
did not stand by brothers in rank and wear
the dust that hoofs stirred up turbidly,
and did not build in the heat of noon
for his men a shade of a striped coat.
They wept over Sakhr ibn Amr
for he was easy when times were hard on men,
liberal and sweet when his good is sought,
bitter when one wanted a bitter acid.
And Khansa weeps in the dark grief,
calls her brother unresponding in dust.
[p.41]
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"The dust is blown over his beauties."
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[Khansa's life spanned the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. Her earlier poetry sees nothing after death but "dust":]
O Sahkr! who will be for time's accidents,
or who will make easy the rough to ride?
You were the comforter without substitute,
you were neither sweet nor bitter.
The dust is blown over his beauties,
over the bright freshness of his face. [p.47]
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"Every long, high tent is pulled down."
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[In what appear to be later poems, Khansa speaks often of the unwelcome changes brought by time, to her and her people. The rise of Islam in Arabia meant that the dominance of the bedouin tribes in the area was over; cities, like Medina and Mecca, would become the centers of power:]
Time frightened me and was evil to him.
As, knight among knights, a hard striker,
you left me midst sons of diversion,
I flap among them like a scarecrow's patch.
[ll.13-16, pp.79-80]
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Every man is stoned by time's hearth stones,
every long, high tent is pulled down.
Neither their subjects or kings remain
of those that the Persian and Rum ruled.
[ll.1-2,p.89]
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"Allah watered earth that came to hold them with the morning
cloud's downpour."
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[Khansa apparently accepted Islam, although still with an awareness of what had been lost. But perhaps one bright spot appears: with Islam's promise of an afterlife, the dust to which her brothers had gone can now be watered by Allah's power:]
I see time wasting my tribe, my father's sons.
I became tears that my weeping does not dry.
O Sakhr, what use is lament or grief
for the dead in a grave that was a halt?
Let not Allah remove Sakhr and his love
nor Allah remove my lord Muawiya.
Let Allah not displace Sakhr, for he is
brother of bounty building by high acts.
I will weep them, by Allah, while grief longs
and while Allah fixes the mountain peaks.
Allah watered earth that came to hold them
with the morning cloud's downpour. [pp.101-02]
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[This is a selection of 52 poems from the above translation. Some word changes have been made, but they are not substantial. The notes of the 1973 edition have been replaced by Wormhoudt's commentary on each poem, usually helpful but occasionally obscure. What is most helpful is that for each poem, the Arabic script is given:]
Selections from the diwan of al Khansa / translated and commented
on by Arthur Wormhoudt. [Oskaloosa, Iowa]: William Penn College,
1977, c1973.
([158] p.)
LC#: PJ7696.K5 A28 1977
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[This anthology has seven of Khansa's poems; the Willis Barnstone translations are sometimes excerpts, rather than full poems, but no indication of that is given:]
A book of women poets from antiquity to now / edited by Aliki
Barnstone & Willis Barnstone. Rev. ed. New York: Schocken
Books, c1992. (xxiv, 822 p.)
LC#: PN6109.9 .B6 1992; ISBN: 0805209972
Includes indexes.
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[This collection contains Marle Hammond's essay "Qasida, Marthiya, and Differance," which includes Hammond's translation (with the Arabic original) of a 26-line elegy for Sakhr, followed by a comparison of each section of Khansa's poem with two others written by women. Another essay, Michael Beard's "One Size Fits All," briefly discusses (pp.25-27) the same Khansa poem, quoting lines translated by A.J. Arberry. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Transforming loss into beauty: essays on Arabic literature
and culture in honor of Magda Al-Nowaihi / edited by Marle Hammond,
Dana Sajdi. Cairo: New York: American University In Cairo Press,
c2008. (xxvi, 404 p.: port.)
LC#: PJ7503 .T62 2008; ISBN: 9789774161025
Includes bibliographical references
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[Clarissa C. Burt's 5-page entry on Khansa in this reference work speaks briefly about the themes found in her poetry and more extensively about the anecdotes told of Khansa by biographers and poets of the 800s and 900's. The entry also lists all of the collections in which her poems can be found in English. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Arabic literary culture, 500-925 / edited by Michael Cooperson
and Shawkat M. Toorawa (Dictionary of literary biography; v.
311). Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005. (xxiv, 447 p.: ill.; 29 cm)
LC#: PN451 .D5 v.311; ISBN: 0787681296
Includes bibliographical references and index
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[Although she does not deal specifically with Khansa in her
study, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych's chapter "The Obligations
and Poetics of Gender: Women's Elegy and Blood Vengeance"
discusses the purpose of women's elegy in pre-Islamic poetry:]
Stetkevych, Suzanne Pinckney. The mute immortals speak: pre-Islamic
poetry and the poetics of ritual (Myth and poetics). Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1993. (xvi, 334 p.)
LC#: PJ7542.Q3 S75 1993; ISBN: 0801427649
"Appendix of Arabic texts"--p. 287-317. Includes bibliographical
references (p. 319-327) and index.
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Updated 03-06-11