Sawda bint Umara al-Hamdaniyya

Sawda bint Umara al-Hamdaniyya — Kahhala heads her entry in A'lam al-Nisa' "Sawda bint Umara ibn al-Ashtar al-Hamdaniyya" — was an Arab poet of eloquence and clear speech who came before Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan. ¹

When she entered he reminded her of lines she had composed in the war, urging Ibn Umara to fight and to support Ali ibn Abi Talib, al-Husayn and their kin, and calling Ali the Prophet ﷺ's brother, the banner of guidance and the lighthouse of faith. She owned them: "Someone like me does not turn from the truth or excuse herself with a lie," and said what moved her was love of Ali and following the truth. ¹ She then asked him to leave the past alone, and quoted a line of al-Khansa' on her brother Sakhr when he mentioned her brother's standing. ¹

She told him he had become the people's master and the holder of their affairs, that God would ask him about their rights, and that men kept rising over them who struck with his power; Busr ibn Abi Artat, sent by him, had killed her men and taken her property. She told him either to dismiss Busr and be thanked, or not, and be known for it. Mu'awiya grew angry and thought of sending her back to Busr; she bowed her head weeping and recited two lines lamenting a man in whose grave justice lay buried. ^{1 2}

Mu'awiya asked whom she meant; she said Ali ibn Abi Talib (may God be pleased with him), and told how she had gone to him to complain of the man he had put over their alms-tax; she found him standing in prayer, and he turned from his prayer and gently asked her need. When she told him he wept, called God to witness that he had never ordered his agents to wrong His creatures or abandon His right, and wrote on a scrap of leather to the collector ordering just measure and weight — citing verses of al-A'raf 85 and Hud 85–86 — and telling him to hold what he had until someone came to take it over. "I took it from him," she said, "and by God he neither sealed it with clay nor tied it with a cord." ²

Mu'awiya ordered that she be given redress; she asked, "For me alone, or for my people as a whole?", saying that unless it was justice for all she would be like the rest of her people. Mu'awiya said Ibn Abi Talib had given them a taste for boldness, quoted Ali's line about Hamdan, and ordered her request written for her and her people. 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