Rabi'ah bint

Poetess

Little of the life of Rābiʿah bint Kaʿb Quzdārī is known for certain except perhaps that she was a contemporary of the Poet Rūdakī (d. 329/940). ʿAwfī (see ʿAwfī) gives a notice to her in his Lubāb al-albāb and cites some of her couplets. An account of a fatal love affair between Rābiʿah and a slave boy appears in ʿAṭṭār’s (see ʿAṭṭār) Ilāhī-Nāmah but appears to be a romanticized legend and have little biographical value.

Translated excerpts in Ishaque, Mohammad. Four Eminent Poetesses of Iran; With a Brief Survey of Iranian and Indian Poetesses of Neo-Persian. Ishaque Publication Fund Series, 1. Calcutta: Iran Society, 1950.