ABSTRACT
QASMUˉNA BINT ISMA¯‘I¯L Qasmu¯na was the rst known Jewish woman writer on the Iberian Peninsula. She is believed to have been the daughter of the famous eleventh-century poet, Samuel Ha-Nagid (Ibn Narı¯llah), the vizier of the king of Granada and the leader of the Jewish community. He apparently had four children, three sons and one daughter, Qasmu¯na, whom he instructed in the art of poetry. He reportedly often began a strophe and called on Qasmu¯na to nish it, a form of recreation common among medieval Arabic peoples. Indeed the rst of the three extant poems by Qasmu¯na is a reply to a short poem by her father concerning someone who harms his benefactor. Qasmu¯na’s clever response compares that person with the moon, which receives its light from the sun and yet sometimes eclipses it. Tradition has it that, upon hearing this, her father said she was a greater poet than he was.
