Al-Ḥurqah
Hind bint al-Nuʿmān, also known as al-Ḥurqah, was a pre-Islamic Arab poet. There is some historiographical debate, going back to the Middle Ages, over precisely what her names were, with corresponding debates over whether some of the bearers of these names were different people or not. An example of a poet-princess, she has been read as a key figure in pre-Islamic poetry.
Al-Ḥurqah
- Name
- Hind bint al-Nuʿmān
- Occupation
- Poet
- Born
- 600 · Al-Hirah.
- Died
- 693 · Al-Hirah.
- Languages
- Arabic
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Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q22935218
In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Hind bint al-Nuʿmān • Native Name — هند بنت النعمان • Occupation — Poet • Father — Al-Nu'man III ibn al-Mundhir
Biography
Biography
Hind was the daughter of al-Nu'man III ibn al-Mundhir, the last Lakhmid king of al-Hira and an Eastern Christian Arab mother. According to the Ḥarb Banī Shaybān maʻa Kisrà Ānūshirwān, Khosrow II, emperor of the Sasanian Empire and her father's overlord, demanded Hind in marriage. Thinking better of the arrangement, al-Nuʿmān sent Hind to seek refuge among the Arabs, and was subsequently attacked and imprisoned by Khosrow. After failing to find sanctuary with the Ghassanids and other Arab tribes, Hind was granted sanctuary among the Banu Shayban through the intercession of their princess al-Ḥujayjah. It was supposedly for this reason that the Banu Shayban had to fight the Battle of Dhi Qar in c. 609. She was then sent to marry al-Nu'man ibn al-Rayyan, "her only cousin to survive the Persian attack on the Kingdom of al-Ḥirah", after which Khosrow granted him the throne of al-Hirah. Ali ibn Nasr al-Katib's Encyclopedia of Pleasure tells that Hind loved a woman named Hind bint al-Khuss al-Zarqāʾ. When al-Zarqāʾ died, her faithful lover "cropped her hair, wore black clothes, rejected worldly pleasures, vowed to God that she would lead an ascetic life until she passed away". Hind bint al-Nuʿmān even built a monastery to commemorate her love for al-Zarqāʾ. This source figures the two characters as the first lesbians in Arab culture.
Works
Works
Some poetry is attributed to Hind, making her (if the attributions are correct) a relatively rare example of a pre-Islamic female poet whose work survives.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Al-Hirah and Iraq
Residences
Al-Hirah.
Birth place
Literature
• Sindawi, Khalid (2022). Pre-Islamic Arab Christian Poetesses: The Biography and Poetry of Hind bint al-Nuʿmān (The Nun of Grief, and the Princess of al-Ḥuraqa). AL-Majma, (17), 63–112.
Other sources
Other sources
Hind is the main figure in the One Thousand and One Nights-Story ‘Adî ibn Zayd and the Princess Hind.
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Al-Hurqah, revision 1363206227 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.372-373 (note 914).
- 2.Samer M. Ali, 'Medieval Court Poetry', in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women, ed. by Natana J. Delong-Bas, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), I 651-54 (at p. 653). https://www.academia.edu/5023780.
- 3.Brock, Sebastian P. The 'Nestorian' Church: A Lamentable Misnomer. Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. 78. 3. 23–35. 1996. 10.7227/BJRL.78.3.3.
- 4.Hamad Alajmi, 'Pre-Islamic Poetry and Speech Act Theory: Al-A'sha, Bishr ibn Abi Khazim, and al-Ḥujayjah' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Indiana University, 2012), pp. 165-66, 195.
- 5.Sahar Amer. Medieval Arab Lesbians and Lesbian-Like Women. Journal of the History of Sexuality. 18. 2. 215–236. 2 May 2009. 10.1353/sex.0.0052.
- 6.Hamad Alajmi, 'Pre-Islamic Poetry and Speech Act Theory: Al-A'sha, Bishr ibn Abi Khazim, and al-Ḥujayjah' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Indiana University, 2012), pp. 165-66.
- 7.Ulrich Marzolph, Richard van Leeuwen und Hassan Wassouf: The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia, ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara 2004, p. 78 (ANE 140).
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
authority record
General reference
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 17 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
39,529 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Al-Fat·h ibn KhàqanAuthor
- Al-GhazaliAuthor
- Al-Hasan ibn SahlAuthor
- Al-ḤātimīAuthor
- Al-Hurr al-AamiliAuthor
- Al-ḤuṭayʾahAuthor
- Al-IbshīhīAuthor
- Al-JahizAuthor
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