al-Zarqa' bint Adi al-Kufiyya

Al-Zarqa' bint Adi al-Kufiyya, as Kahhala describes her in A'lam al-Nisa', was one of the women of eloquence, intelligence and judgement; she supported Ali ibn Abi Talib at Siffin. ¹

He relates that when power was settled on Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan he asked his companions who remembered al-Zarqa''s words; they all did, and advised him to have her killed. He replied: "What bad advice! Would it become someone like me for people to say I killed a woman after I came to rule?" He then wrote to his governor at Kufa to send her with a trusted male relative and some of her tribe's horsemen, on a well-prepared seat and decently screened. ^{1 2}

She told the governor she was not swerving from obedience: if the ruler left it to her she would stay, but if it was a command, obedience came first. She was carried in a litter and well escorted. Mu'awiya welcomed her, and she said her journey had been as though she were a cherished girl of the house or a cradled child. He asked: "Were you not riding the red camel between the lines at Siffin, kindling the war?" She answered: "The head has died and the tail been cut off; time brings changes; who reflects sees; and one matter gives rise to another." ²

She said she did not remember her words; Mu'awiya said he did, and recalled a speech likening the strife to a blind and deaf trial, with proverbs — a lamp gives no light in the sun, stars do not shine beside the moon, a mule does not outrun a horse, only iron cuts iron — calling on the Muhajirun and Ansar to be patient, and saying that women's dye is henna and men's dye is blood. ^{2 3}

Mu'awiya said, "You shared with Ali in every drop of blood he shed"; she replied that God had given him good tidings and that his words pleased her, but how could she make the deed match them? Mu'awiya said their loyalty to Ali after his death was dearer to him than their love for him in his life, and asked her needs; she said she had sworn never to ask anything of a ruler she had opposed. He granted her an estate yielding ten thousand dirhams in its first year, sent her and her companions home with honour, and wrote to the governor of Kufa commending her and her clan. ³

The stories of these 'women who came before Mu'awiya' are told in the adab literature; Kahhala takes them from Ibn Tayfur's Balaghat al-Nisa', al-Iqd al-Farid, Subh al-A'sha, Ibn Asakir's history and Nihayat al-Arab. They voice the positions their speakers took in the civil war, and the museum gives them as attributed reports, without a verdict. ³