Qabiha
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Qabiha or Qabīḥah (“The Ugly”), floruit 869, was a concubine of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mutawakkil (r. 847-861) and the mother of Caliph Al-Mu'tazz (r. 866-869). She is known to have been politically influental on behalf of her son durng the Anarchy at Samarra (861-870).
Concubine
Qabiha is noted to have originally been a Greek from the Byzantine Empire[1] before she was captured and sold to slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate in accordance with the rules of a kafir of Dar al-Harb.
She was enslaved by the vizier al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Ḥasan before she was placed in the Abbasid harem, possibly as a gift to the Caliph.
She was given the slave name Qabīḥah; the name means "ugly", but she was likely to have been beautiful; it was common to give names that described the opposite of reality to people with good qualities, in order to protect against the evil eye.[2]
After her arrival to the Caliphal harem, she was selected to serve as the concubine to Caliph Al-Mutawakkil. She was described as the favorite concubine of the Caliph. She became the mother of the future Caliph Al-Mu'tazz in 847, and of Prince Ismāʿīl.
She was also described as a poet. She reportedly preserved a poem by Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn al-Muʿallā, which she had heard from him herself, and which was written down by her dictate, and therefore preserved.[3]
In 861, the Caliph was captured by his Turkic gilman slave solders, which resulted in a civil war known as the Anarchy at Samarra (861-870).
The Turkic commanders that supported her son as candidate to the throne, wrote to her in the harem and expressed their concern over the safety of her son.[4] She wrote to the Turkic commander that guarded the captive Caliph, Ahmad b-Tulun, and asked him to give her the head of the Caliph (her enslaver) in exchange for the position as Governor of Wasit.[5] He replied that he could not betray his oath. After this reply, she replaced him as the guard of the imprisoned Caliph with another commander, Ibn Tulun, who killed him.[6] Upon the death of her enslaver the Caliph, she, as the mother of a child acknowledged by her enslaver, she became manumitted as an umm-walad.
Mother of the Caliph
Her son Al-Mu'tazz was proclaimed Calip in 866.
When her son the Caliph wished to appoint his half-brother prince al-Muayyad, the son of Habashiyaa from Abbessinia, to the heir of the throne, she had al-Muayyad killed, so that her son the Caliph appointed her younger son prince Ismail as his heir instead.[7]
As Caliphal mother, Qabiha built up a personal fortune from inside the harem, via financing business enteprces through her agents.[8] When a mutiny took place among the Turkic slave army in North Africa, her son the Caliph, aware of her fortune, asked her for a loan he could use to defeat it, but she refused.[9]
When the mutiny eventually developed in to a rebellion that caused the death of her son in 869, she managed to eskaped from the Caliphal Palace via an underground passage in the company of her daughter.[10] Two months later, she turned herself over along with her fortune of 1.8 million dirham, and the victorious Turkic commander commented that her fortune had killed her son, since she had been able to prevent the rebellion of she had lent it to him.[11]
She was one of the women who was described by Ibn al-Sāʿīs (d. 1276) in his famous work over the consorts of the Abbasid Caliphs.[12]
References
- ↑ al-Sāʿī, I., Bray, J. (2017). Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad. USA: NYU Press. s. 131, 171
- ↑ al-Sāʿī, I., Bray, J. (2017). Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad. USA: NYU Press. s. 131, 171
- ↑ al-Sāʿī, I., Bray, J. (2017). Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad. USA: NYU Press. s. 131, 171
- ↑ Taef El-Azhari, E. (2019). Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661-1257. Storbritannien: Edinburgh University Press.
- ↑ Taef El-Azhari, E. (2019). Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661-1257. Storbritannien: Edinburgh University Press.
- ↑ Taef El-Azhari, E. (2019). Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661-1257. Storbritannien: Edinburgh University Press.
- ↑ Taef El-Azhari, E. (2019). Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661-1257. Storbritannien: Edinburgh University Press. p.
- ↑ Taef El-Azhari, E. (2019). Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661-1257. Storbritannien: Edinburgh University Press.
- ↑ Taef El-Azhari, E. (2019). Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661-1257. Storbritannien: Edinburgh University Press. p.
- ↑ Taef El-Azhari, E. (2019). Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661-1257. Storbritannien: Edinburgh University Press. p.
- ↑ Taef El-Azhari, E. (2019). Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661-1257. Storbritannien: Edinburgh University Press. p.
- ↑ al-Sāʿī, I., Bray, J. (2017). Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad. USA: NYU Press. s. 131, 171