Umm Sinan bint Khaythama al-Madhhijiyya

Umm Sinan bint Khaythama ibn Kharasha al-Madhhijiyya, in the entry of Kahhala in A'lam al-Nisa', was an Arab poet who came before Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan; he notes that al-Iqd al-Farid and Subh al-A'sha call her Jushamiyya. ¹

Marwan ibn al-Hakam had imprisoned a boy of Banu Layth for an offence committed at Medina; his paternal grandmother Umm Sinan spoke to Marwan about him, and when he answered her roughly she set out for Mu'awiya. ¹

Mu'awiya welcomed her and said he had known her to hate his nearness and stir his enemies against him; she replied that the sons of Abd Manaf had pure characters — they were not ignorant after knowledge, rash after forbearance or vengeful after pardon — and he was the most fitting to follow his forefathers' ways. ¹ He recalled verses of hers calling Madhhij to rise for Ali ibn Abi Talib and likening him to a crescent ringed by stars; she said, "That was so, and we hope for a successor in you." One of his companions recalled her elegy on Ali; she called it "a tongue that spoke and a word of truth," said frankly that Ali had been dearer to them than he, but that he was dearer to them than Marwan and Sa'id ibn al-As for his forbearance and generous pardon, and advised him to refute those men and keep them at a distance. ^{1 2}

She complained that Marwan in Medina did not judge justly, pursued the slips of Muslims, and had imprisoned her son's son. Mu'awiya said, "I will not ask about his offence or the case for it — write an order for his release," and when she said her provisions were spent and her camel exhausted he ordered her a well-saddled mount and five thousand dirhams. 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