SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Qasmuna Bint Ismaʿil was a poet who lived in Muslim Iberia (al-Andalus) in the twelfth century CE and whose scant textual legacy has disproportionately captured the imagination of literary historians for two reasons: First, she was Jewish and, as an Arabic poet, perhaps emblematic of La Convivencia or the peaceful religious coexistence that is said to have characterized the culture of al-Andalus for many centuries; and second, she reportedly helped her father compose poetry in the strophic and multilingual genre of the muwashshah (pl. muwashshahat). As such, Qasmuna would seem to be situated at the intersection of Arabic and Hebrew literature, although the evidence for this is circumstantial.