Domestic Violence in Abbasid Adab Anthologies

In order to get more intimate glimpses into the relationships, the possibilities, and the actions of violence within the domestic household and the family, one needs to look into anthologies of adab.

One anecdote in al-Faraj relates that a young man, Bishr b. ‘Abdallah, was enamored with Jayda', a married woman. As she was jealously guarded by her husband, a ploy was devised to allow Jayda' to spend a night out with Bishr. Bishr secured the help of a male friend who masqueraded as the woman by wearing her clothes and returning to her house. Unfortunately,

NADIA MARIA BL CHBIkH

the fake wife broke a household utensil and her husband took a whip and lashed her back. She was saved by the intervention of the husband's mother and sister.^[603]

The anecdote describes conflicts and tensions in private relations, the harmfulness of domestic intimacy, and some of the dynamics of household violence.

The anecdote also provides a scenario of external involvement in such quarrels, with female relatives intervening on the wife's behalf. Family violence was a dramatic spectacle, played out in the presence of the hus­band's female relatives. For women, embeddedness in their spouse's family was the most effective means to counterbalance the overwhelming power of their husbands. Early Islamic societies, like most pre-industrial communities, tolerated the male privilege to hit (‘punish') wives as a way to express male authority.^[605] Communities, however, had standards as to what constituted excessive violence and women often had allies within the community, most prominently the senior women. Such was the case in the previous anecdote. Assault cases were mediated informally by family members, notably the husband's mother. This was so because of the special ties that bonded sons to their mothers.^[606]

Expectations about domestic chores and a generally submissive and obe­dient demeanour on the part of the wife were major sources of conflict leading to violent episodes. Husbands expected their wives to meet their immediate needs. In his comprehensive adab work al-‘Iqd al-farid, the fourth-/tenth-century Andalusian scholar Ibn Abd Rabbih (d. 328/940)

includes a passage that captures the traits of the ideal wife.

Although women were legally subject to their husband's discipline, the parameters of that discipline and the catalysts triggering wife beating con­tinued to be questioned. A characterisation that could constitute a catalyst for conjugal discipline occurs once again in al-‘Iqd al-farid. A section entitled ‘the characteristics of the wicked woman' (Sifat al-mar'a al-su') includes a descrip­tion of the archetypal wicked woman: she has a vicious tongue; she is prone to excesses, laughing with no restraint, and lying.

Some anecdotes carry violence to its extreme limit. Such is the story about a beautiful and chaste woman from Baghdad. She had a cousin who was enamoured with her but her father married her to another. Her cousin continued to court her. Her husband left one day for some business and, wanting to cool down, she removed her cloths and sat by the well to wash. She left her golden rings by her cloths. A magpie stole her rings at the same time as her cousin was passing by. He retrieved the rings, put them on and sat by the pool so that the husband might see him and think that he was with his wife and hence divorce her. Such an eventuality would enable the cousin to marry her. When the husband came, the cousin stood up to salute him and made sure that the husband would see the rings in his hands. The husband recognised the rings, came in and saw his wife bathing. There was no doubt in his mind that this was the washing of janaba (ritual impurity) and that the cousin had had sexual intercourse with her.

Women in the adab texts of the late third/ninth and fourth/tenth centu­ries were confined by a stringently controlled normative conduct. The processes of moral control and discipline put the social role of women at the centre of the moral discourse, causing any deviation or transgression by women to be seen as a moral danger to society.^[611] One anecdote reflects the deep fears that men felt at any possible humiliation brought to bear on them as a consequence of the behaviour of their female relatives, in this case their daughters.

One of my neighbors was Abu ‘Ubayda... He used to be a companion (nadim) of Ishaq b. Ibrahim al-Mas‘abi. He told me that one day Ishaq summoned him in the middle of the night... He [Ishaq] threw at me [Abu ‘Ubayda] papers that he was holding in his hands and said: read these. I read them all. They were the reports of the police chiefs... each one relating the day's events. All the reports mentioned raids undertaken against women who were found fornicating. They were the daughters of vizirs, umara' and notables who had died or who had lost their positions... [Ishaq said] I am afraid lest a similar fate befalls my five daughters and I have gathered them in this room to kill them immediately and find rest.^[612]

In this anecdote it is the father who is about to inflict the ultimate punish­ment on his daughters, and that for no reason, the daughters having com­mitted no breach whatsoever.

What this story from this fourth-/tenth-century compilation clearly implies is that, in the absence of constant vigilance, the natural depravity of women would necessarily lead to their downfall.

If free women lived amidst vulnerable conditions, one can only imagine the physical abuse that slave women could be subjected to by their owners. Slavery shaped the mores of Abbasid society and reshaped the Abbasid family. The presence of slave women led to a role reversal affecting the position of the free women, on the actual and affective levels. It was under these ever evolving conditions that the jurists worked out a legal system to regulate both family and property relations.^[613]

The violence and abuse that were suffered by slave women are brought up in the texts in connection to ‘Inan, a slave woman who became a leading courtesan and elite singer in the Abbasid urban world. She achieved notoriety for her literary skills, hence her presence in the adab anthologies. In spite of her poetic skills, her education and her culture which brought social prestige to her master, when she refused to keep company with the poet Bakr she was lashed.^[614] The anecdote reflects the ease with which ‘Inan could be severely beaten for a negligible infraction. And indeed, when on one occasion ‘Inan fell ill and asked her master, al-Natifi, to postpone the visit of the poet al- Ahnaf, al-Natifi showed no signs of compassion. He beat ‘Inan a number of times and forced her to receive her undesired visitor. ‘Inan cried and ‘her tears rolled down like pearls streaming out of a thread'. She responded by saying: ‘May he who beats her unjustly have his right hand harden upon his lash.'^[615] Another slave woman, ‘Arib al-Ma'muniyya, was also subjected to beating by her owner. She fell in love with Hatim b. ‘Adi, a friend of her owner al-Marakibi. ‘Arib fled with her lover, stayed with him for a while and then left him. Her owner searched for her, and when he found her he hit her and dragged her to his house while she was shouting: ‘Oh you, why are you hitting me? I will not be patient with you. If I am a slave, sell me.'^[616] ‘Inan's and ‘Arib's biographies highlight the difficulties and impediments that the skilled slave poetesses had to endure as well as the physical abuse that they were subjected to.