DINA DAHBANY-MIRAGLIA
The Muwashshah in Yemenite
Jewish Women's Poetry
by Dina Dahbany-Miraglia
SUMMARY: The Andalusian muwashshah
is an extraordinary strophic poetic genre. It embodies as well as reflects the
languages and beliefs of the peoples who were living together in Islamic Spain
between the 11th and 14th centuries. Blending Romance and Mozarabic linguistic
elements, the muwashshah incorporates cultural features from all classes in the
Andalusian world. A written form, and therefore the purvue of educated men, yet
there exist some muwashshah written in the female voice. These muwashshah are
invariably romantic and even sexually graphic. Intended for secular
entertainment, the muwashshah's structural variations were capitalized on by
Sephardic Jewish poets, such as Yehuda haLevi and Shomo ben Yehuda Gabirol
(Gvirol) who created a body of religious poetry in Hebrew, a few of which found
their way into the Yemenite Diwan attributed to Yemen's poet laureate, Shalom
ash-Shabazi.
In Yemen Jewish women were denied
access to literacy. Their poetry was almost entirely oral. Nevertheless
elements of the muwashshah's complex forms were adopted, but rarely in its
fullest forms. The first half of this
paper will identify a selection of Yemenite Jewish women's poem songs that have
incorporated aspects of the muwashshah. The second half will contain a
muwashshah created by the author.