Qurtuba’s Monumentality and Artistic Significance
(‘Splendor’), lived an ascetic life dedicated to making copies of the Koran, which she donated as devotional objects, as the Tunisian Fadl had done, from whom signed copies of the Koran have been found. An example of the piousness of this royal family scribe is the fact that the mosque in the suburb of al-Rusafa, to the north of the Qurtuba medina, carries her name: «al-Baha’ Mosque». Baha’ died in the month of rayab 304 (December 917), at the beginning of the reign of ‘Abd al-Rahman III, for whom several slaves with calligraphic skills worked, such as the freed slave Radiya, copyist in the official installations; Kitman, from Cordoba, who was also Caliph’s katib in the palace-fortress of Qurtuba, and Muzna (d. 358 [986]), another excellent female scribe and person of letters (‘adiba’). Also of this period is Zumurrud, female slave katiba who died in 336 (947). Apart from people of letters, bibliophiles and calligraphers, Abbasid Baghdad also exported some female scribes, such as Sitt Nasim al-Bagdadiya, who Abd al-Rahman III employed due to her skill, to imitate his writing and draw up official documents when, in his old age, he had lost his sight. His son and successor, al-Hakam II, also had a number of female slaves at his service who were trained in music, letters and calligraphy: Lubnà (d. 984-986), successor of her father al-Nasir, was expert in grammar, metrics and accounting, as well as a poet and magnificent calligrapher (‘katiba’, ‘jattata’); the Cordovan Fatima bint Zakariya ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Katib (d. 1036), daughter of a client and scribe at the service of al-Hakam II and of his hayib Ya‘far, was scribe (‘katiba’) with excellent calligraphy as well as a polygraph expert; she died at the age of 94 and was buried, ceremoniously and multitudinously, in the cemetery of Umm Salama in Qurtuba. Al-Hakam’s successor, Hisham II, was served by another of these slave calligraphers, called Nizam al-Katiba, who worked in the Cordovan palacefortress (qasr al-jilafa bi-Qurtuba); extremely eloquent, she specialized in copying and drafting epistles (‘rasa’il’) and was the author of the letter (‘jitab’) offering condolences to ‘Abd al-Malik al-Muzaffar for the death of his father Almanzor and naming him the latter’s successor in shawwal 392 (August-September 1002). However, the calligraphic activity of women in Qurtuba was not limited only to the court environment, but its intensity was such that it is frequently observed that in the eastern suburb, during the Caliphate, 127 women worked making copies of the Koran with Kufic calligraphy, reason for which Julián Ribera opines that the massive use of female labor in the production of copies of the Koran was due to the fact that they were paid less than the men, apart from their abilities and the probity of their skill. Following the decline of the Caliphate, the Andalusi sources continue to mention Qurtuba calligraphies. The series of biographies incorporated by al-Maqqari in Nafh al-tib taken from Ibn Hayyan, who, it should be noted, said that no slave in Al-Andalus could be matched in wisdom, education and poetic skills, mention literary freed female slaves and poets, such as ‘A’isha bint Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Qadim of Qurtuba (d. 400 [1009/1010]), perhaps the daughter of Muhammad ibn Qadim ibn Ziyad, who was subsequently a freed slave. ‘A’isha composed panegyrics for several Andalusi sovereigns and she
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