ʿArīb Puts al-Wāṯiq in His Place: Visualizing Unspoken Love (and Unbridled Emotion)

Abstract In this essay, I analyse an anecdote in the Nisāʾ al-ḫulafāʾ of Ibn al-Sāʿī (d. 674/1276) in which ʿArīb (d. 277/890–1) describes an exchange between al-Wāṯiq (d. 232/847), his slave Farīda (fl. 3rd/9th c.), and one of Farīda’s unnamed female servants (fl. 3rd/9th c.). I show how the anecdote’s visuality and spatiality, and the ensuing visualisation in which readers engage, enable ʿArīb, herself once a slave, to contrast the caliph’s power with the slave women’s power over him, as well as to contrast the women’s restraint with the man’s loss of control. In the space of only a few lines, the power of love and lust are demonstrated in a neat exchange of words unspoken.