Women and the State on the Eve of Islam

Abstract

ing careers of the Emesan Julias and the Palmyrene Zenobia, Arab queens receded more or less into the background. Thus, for the last few centuries of the pre-Islamic period, characterized by the pious and proud Moslems as al-Jdhiliyah, or the "Age of Ignorance," we can point at best to a shadowy HJimydrite Balqis, a half-forgotten Ghassanid(?) Mawia, and a humiliated and bereaved Lakhmid Hind. The great majority of the royal women of these dynasties and of that of Kindah figure little or not at all in the available records. This may be due partly, as already pointed out, to the paucity and poverty of these records, if not indeed to the prejudice of the secondand thirdcentury Moslem recorders. On the other hand, the situation may be reflecting some loss in public position suffered by the women in the centuries immediately preceding Islam. Changing social conditions, due in part to contacts with neighboring peoples and kingdoms, may have deprived the Arab woman of this period of some of the public prestige and privileges enjoyed by her earlier sisters. However, it must not be inferred that the influence of the Arab woman had become negligible in the various phases of both private and public life. In her home the free Arab woman of all classes in her time-honored role of legal wife and mother expressed herself freely and forcefully. In poetry, the major literary passion of pre-Islamic Arabia, the Arab woman figured large. Not only did the romantic poets sing her praises in passionate verse but the chivalrous Arab, as yet not too civilized, coveted and prized her opinion as literary critic. The story is told of how the Kindite "vagabond prince" and greatest of Arab poets, Imrfi al-Qais, during his wanderings settled for a while * See "Pre-Islamic Arab-Queens," AJSL, LVIII (1941), 1-22.