Ulayya bint al-Mahdi

Ulayya bint al-Mahdi was an Abbasid princess born in 777 CE in Baghdad to Maknūna, a singer and concubine, and the third Abbasid Caliph, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who ruled from 775 to 785 CE. She was the half-sister of Harun al-Rashid, who ruled from 789 to 809 CE as the fifth caliph of the Abbasid dynasty, and who is portrayed as a central character in One Thousand and One Nights. 

A poet, singer, and composer, Ulayya set her poems to music, but due to her status as a noblewoman, was forbidden to perform in public. She performed in private to an intimate circle of family members, other female musicians, and attendants. 

Despite this, Ulayya still became one of the more well-known female poets of the Abbasid Empire, with more than two hundred verses appearing in classical Arabic anthologies including Kitab al-Aghani [The Book of Songs] by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani. Her translated poems appear in Poems by Arab Women: An Anthology (Saqi Books, 2025), edited by Abdullah Al-Udhari; We Wrote in Symbols: Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers (Saqi Books, 2021), edited by Selma Dabbagh; and Arabic Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), edited by Marle Hammond as part of the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Series. 

Ulayya was encouraged to write poetry from a young age by her tutor, a poet named Abu Hafs al-Shitranji. Many of her family members were also musicians, poets, and singers, and her father and brother were known to be patrons of the arts during their rule. Al-Rashid’s reign is regarded as the height of the Islamic Golden Age, with intellectual and cultural activities flourishing. 

Widowed at the age of twenty-two, Ulayya returned to the royal palace where she continued to write poems, most of which were love poems addressed to her brother’s palace servants named Tall and Rasha. 

Ulayya died in 825 CE.