Consorts of the Caliphs

“A meticulously edited translation. The rich variety of experiences related here shakes our preconceived notions and can help towards a better understanding, not just of female slaves, but also of women generally in this period and environment.” (Journal of Islamic Studies) “Yet another wonderful collaborative project of the Library of Arabic Literature. Clear from this volume’s pages is that there was great appreciation of the original text and the entire process of editing and translating was a labor of love; the reader, specialist or non-specialist, reaps these fruits by getting to know another great text of Arabic classical literature.” (Journal of the American Oriental Society)

Ibn al-Sāʿī (Author) Ibn al-Sāʿī (d. 674⁄1276) was a historian, law librarian, and prolific author from Baghdad. His considerable scholarly output included treatises on hadith, literary commentaries, histories of the caliphs, and biographical collections, though little has survived. Shawkat M. Toorawa (Editor) Shawkat M. Toorawa is Professor of Arabic literature in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale University, where he teaches classical Arabic, the Arabic humanities, and literatures of the world. Marina Warner (Foreword by) Marina Warner DBE is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London; a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her book Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, as well as the 2013 Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Julia Bray (Introducer) Julia Bray became the Abdulaziz Saud AlBabtain Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford and a fellow of St. John’s College in 2012, having previously taught at the universities of Manchester, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Paris 8-Vincennes—Saint-Denis. She writes on medieval to early modern Arabic literature, life-writing, and social history. She has contributed to the New Cambridge History of Islam (2010), to Essays in Arabic Literary Biography 1350-1850 (2009), and to cross-cultural studies such as Approaches to the Byzantine Family (2013) and edited Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam (2006). With Wen-chin Ouyang, she edits the monograph series Edinburgh Studies in Classical Arabic Literature. With Helen Blatherwick, she is editing a special issue of the journal Cultural History on the history of emotions in Arabic.