Hafsa la granadina, Carmen Martín de la Escalera

Hafsa of Granada

Al-Motamid 26, Tetouan 1953. Source: Spanish National Library

There are vast lands – and more particular places, too – that enjoy the mysterious power to provoke the flourishing of poetry. Marked by a subtle vibration of emotions, by a captivating beauty and harmony, they awaken in discerning souls the desire to express themselves in sublime ways, to escape the simple reality that makes up the usual realm of existence – a desire that is, in itself, the fundamental motivation of poetry. 

In al-Andalus, one such focal point of poetic splendour was the city of Granada, which, moreover, seems to have been home to the greatest number of Spanish Muslim women who were noted for their literary abilities and their beauty [1]. Yet none of these remarkable women achieved a fame that was anywhere near as resistant to the obscurity that attends the passage the time as Hafsa bint al-Hajj, a tragic figure with an impassioned soul, a well-formed personality and tortured love affairs; a tender and elegant poetess who avoided the

Al-Motamid 26, Tetouan 1953. Source: Spanish National Library

conventionalism typical of Arabic poetry and who achieved, instead, a personal and thoroughly human mode of poetic expression; whose love life, threaded through with triumphs and dangerous emotional entanglements, unfolds in parallel with the history of Almoravid Granada, which was conquered by the Almohads.

Hafsa was the daughter of a noble and affluent Berber who had established himself in al-Andalus. We do not know her exact date of birth, but we can assume that she was born in Granada in around 530AH (1135AD). Her childhood and adolescence were almost certainly spent in the city on the river Darro, where she received the kind of thorough education befitting the daughter of such a prominent father: literature, music and, above all, poetry, the latter held in especially high esteem by the Arabs; that is, the three aspects of female culture that were most prized at that time [2]. We do not have any exact dates relating to the early years of her life – which would later be bathed in such glory – meaning that there is much left to be discovered: her joys and her sorrows, her good fortune and her pain. It is possible that the years for which we have little information were simply spent disturbed by the upheaval of the war brought to Granada by the last ruler of the ṭāʾifa of Zaragoza, al-Mustansir, who was forced to yield his newly-conquered stronghold when he was finally defeated by the Almoravids [3]. Political and military peace were established anew until, in 549AH (1154AD), the Almohads reached the plains of Granada.

It was in the time period spanning these two acts of war that there appeared on Hafsa’s emotional horizon the single greatest and most passionate love of her heart – her only true love, in fact. Despite the later events that could have crushed the reality of her feelings, in the depths of her being there lived only one person until the night of his tragic death, and even after his death: the equally famous poet Abu Ja’far.

Abu Ja’far, the descendent of a noble Arab family, reached a position of prominence among the poets of Granada at a very young age. Yet the woman on whom he lavished his talent and his charms – Hafsa – did not immediately respond to Abu Ja’far’s expressions of love. But the love that Hafsa inspired in him was so deeply rooted in the intimate harmonisation of their souls – as much as in his admiration for her triumphant beauty – that this lover could do little to relinquish the desire to conquer his beloved. Ultimately the poet Abu Ja’far’s determined efforts produced sorrowful and plaintive poetry, to which the poetess Hafsa responded as a sardonic and savage echo. Only scant fragments of these exchanges of emotional and literary ingenuity have come down to us. Innumerable letters in verse, madrigals and odes have been lost for the curious admiration of future centuries, just as we have lost the scent of the roses that perfumed the garden in Granada where Hafsa would finally agree to meet with Abu Ja’far. “I swear on your life, the garden did not rejoice because we were together; rather, it made clear its envy and its jealousy,” Hafsa would later feel compelled to write, seeking to solidify the memory of her good fortune, of the passionate discussions with her beloved, of the poetic improvisations that flowed from her lips at those meetings and of the love in her heart that would never die, not even when destiny would place such distance between them and the hours they had spent in marvellous union, which themselves made her exclaim anxiously one day: “Because of you, I envy my own eyes, I envy myself, I envy you and the time and the space (where you are)[4]. Even if you were to conceal yourself in my eyes until the Day of Judgement, I would still not be satisfied.”

Engrossed in their love, the two lovers did not notice that Fate was subtly beginning to weave a black thread of misfortune, which approached them in the deceptive guise of great triumphs, praise and support. The stronghold of Granada was surrendered to the Almohads by the last Almoravid governor in 549AH (1154AD) and the governor himself was replaced by the son of Abd al-Mu’min, Abu Sa’id [5]. As well as being a magnificent warrior, the young malik – who was only just a teenager, then – was fiercely intelligent and a great lover of literature. He soon gathered about himself the most excellent poets and writers of Granada and nominated Abu Ja’far to a higher position, a move which, perhaps because it seemed like a dark premonition of a fall-from-grace precipitated by the schemes of those who might be envious, thoroughly upset Hafsa. “You have been placed at the head (of the governor’s administration),” she wrote to her beloved, “And your enemies, on account of their unjust nature and their knowledge (of the benefits that this position affords), have not stopped repeating since then: ‘Why is he the boss?’”

We have to assume that it was during Abu Sa’id’s first stay in Granada – he left there on a number of occasions to go to war – that he came to know the famous Hafsa, the female embodiment of the glory of the city. There is nothing to suggest that the interest that was awakened in the young malik was anything other than a profound admiration for a poetess of such renowned talent and refined culture, a poetess who was the jewel in the crown of the gatherings that women, thanks to the freedom that Spanish Muslim women enjoyed, would attend, at which there would often be recitations of improvised verses about even the most minor of occurrences. Everything that set Hafsa apart is illustrated by the fact that Abu Sa’id entrusted her with the task, both political and diplomatic, of delivering the pledge of allegiance on behalf of the inhabitants of Granada before his father, Abd al-Mu’min, who at that time had established his court in Salé. As ever, the talent, beauty and tact of the poetess were more than up to the task and the sultan bestowed upon her privileges that guaranteed her plentiful income for the rest of her life.

However, neither Abu Ja’far’s ascendency in politics nor the upward trajectory of Hafsa’s reputation did anything to diminish, over the years, the light of a love that filled their lives with hope, the memory of which remains very moving. Their separation, the neglect of one another that this seemed to bring with it, and, in the end, the tragic death of the poet were ultimately caused by matters beyond the control of the two lovers. The agreement with Hafsa, and her extraordinary charm, slowly awakened an uncontrollable passion in the impulsive malik. This manly passion was the last note in a rising scale of emotions that were born of a learned teenager’s admiration for a woman of greater talent. The mighty malik – who held the power of life and death over the people of Granada, who was the master of their freedom and their property and who was the dispenser of indulgences and privileges – offered Hafsa the intoxicating opportunity to rule in the heart of a sovereign. And, with time, this woman of Granada did indeed become the ruler of his heart, without ever forgetting – oh, woe! – her beloved poet. Perhaps she begged his forgiveness for not daring to resist the desires of the malik; perhaps for wanting, anxiously, to take both love and power in her delicate hands without losing anything herself; perhaps because the love that she had professed for Abu Ja’far for all these years had left a void in her restless and sensitive soul, which could only be filled by the vain female desire to inspire in the glorious Almohad prince a passion disproportionate to her own. We cannot know what intimate motives made Hafsa give way to Abu Sa’id. Life shows us only one aspect of the truth of human beings and the truth of their actions. This is why the soul is a stage where tragedies and dramas are played out, the likes of which are never seen in the Great Theatre of the World [6].

It is only seemingly insignificant events that allow us to discern in this particular instance that, though the drama of Hafsa and Abu Ja’far’s shared love was still playing out, the continued faithfulness of Hafsa’s feelings for the refined and magnificent poet served to dignify the misfortune that would otherwise characterise the acts of this drama, becoming the curtain behind which Abu Ja’far advanced towards a tragic fate, the shape of which clearly came into view soon after the relationship of the woman from Granada and the Almohad prince began.

The power of Abu Ja’far’s father had been substantially diminished at the command of the Sultan – an order carried out by Abu Sa’id – and the son of the persecuted man stood at his father’s side. While on a hunt, Abu Ja’far came up with a satire, which an unfaithful friend repeated to the son of the Sultan. Abu Sa’id, whose innate jealousy longed for an excuse of any kind to crush the rival he believed to be in Hafsa’s thoughts at all times, immediately stripped Abu Ja’far of the positions to which he had previously been named. Noble Abu Ja’far, loath to bow before such injustice and disgrace, held his head high, filled, too, with jealousy, anger and a desire for revenge. He came together with friends of his father to conspire against the tyranny of the Almohads. He was arrested and, from that point on, he entertained few allusions as to his fate. “Death watches me constantly,” he wrote at that time, “and occupies my thoughts when I try to avoid it.” As for Hafsa, who was torn apart with sadness when she heard the misfortune and danger in which her lover found himself, she expressed her pain in a set of very tender and sincere laments, which reveal the intensity of a love that became more profound and more courageous even as it risked incurred the wrath of the malik.

“I send you a greeting that would make flowers bloom and doves coo in their trees.

A greeting to an absent man who resides in my heart, even when my eyes are deprived of him.

Do not think, (oh, Abu Ja’far), that your absence has erased you from my heart;

That is something that, by God’s will, could never come to pass.”

In another poem, she writes: “A grief-stricken being sends her greetings to all those beauties (that exist within Him), which have distanced themselves from her, taking with them their good fortune and their sweet happiness.”

Good fortune and sweet happiness did not simply distance themselves from Hafsa; they left her for good with the horrible death suffered by Abu Ja’far, who was crucified on the orders of Abu Sa’id in 560AH (1163AD). The pain rid Hafsa of all cowardice, all fear, all caution. It is easy to imagine the lengths to which this impassioned woman went, provoking the furious malik to threaten her with death.

“They have threatened me because they have forced me to mourn for a friend who they took from me by the sword.

May God be kind to those who shed such copious tears, or who mourn those who have fallen victim to their enemies!

May the rain clouds of morning nourish his tomb, wherever it is, with as much generosity as his own generous hands.”

So Hafsa wrote, in a poem filled with serene sadness and piety, the last that we know was written by the great poetess. With Abu Ja’far dead, it is as if the spring from which poetry flowed in the heart and mind of this woman of Granada dried up. In any case, her life changed drastically. She retired from her life in society, which she had loved so much, and she dedicated herself to teaching, which she did with such ability that she quickly became famous. The caliph Ya’qub al-Mansur asked her to be schoolmistress to the Almohad princesses, an offer that she accepted [7]. We do not know if Hafsa was still in Granada at this point, or whether she was already living in Marrakesh. It is possible that she had been in Morocco since 571AH (1176AD), the year in which Abu Sa’id relocated definitively to the Sultan’s court; perhaps he took her with him to distance her from a city that evoked both pleasant and bitter memories for her. We do not know whether her relationship with Abu Sa’id was able to withstand the cruel blow that it was dealt by the tragedy of the poet’s crucifixion, although everything points to the fact that the love of the violent and infatuated Almohad prince for Hafsa endured until his untimely death from the plague that devastated Morocco at the end of 571AH.  

This is the information that historians and writers have provided only in passing. After the death of Abu Ja’far, we learn nothing else, directly, about Hafsa; there is nothing more about that spirit, as sensitive and as taut as the strings of a guzla that vibrate in the slightest of breezes. Hafsa’s voice falls silent after losing Abu Ja’far. Like a perfume that has evaporated – the perfume of the flowers in the gardens of Granada, like a piece of music that fades to silence in the Beyond, like a shadow that disappears in the shadows of night, Hafsa, beautiful Hafsa, that exquisite poetess of Granada, sinks into mystery. It is thought that she died in around 586AH (1196AD) in Marrakesh, a city situated in untamed countryside that was so different from the glowing meadows of Granada and of the verdant gardens, where she had lived an undying love with her Abu Ja’far, gone but never forgotten.

                             Carmen Martín de la Escalera

Author’s note: The French translation of M. Louis Di Giacomo has been used for the Spanish versions of the verses cited.