00:00One woman in Al-Andalus refused marriage her entire life, and wrote the harshest poetic
00:05insult in Arabic literary history against the man she once loved.
00:09Walayda bint al-Mustakfi was the daughter of a murdered caliph, stripped of his throne.
00:15Instead of retreating into a quiet life, she opened her home as a literary salon for poets
00:20and thinkers, unmarried, unveiled, utterly unconventional for a woman of her rank.
00:26There, she met the poet Ibn Zaydin. They fell into a stormy love affair,
00:31exchanging some of the tenderest verses in Andalusian literature.
00:34But one day, Ibn Zaydin's eye wandered toward one of Walayda's own servants.
00:40Humiliated, she answered him with biting verses he never forgot.
00:44Watching from the shadows was another man, the wealthy vizier Ibn Abdus,
00:49who had long desired Walayda for himself. When Ibn Zaydin wrote a mocking letter in
00:54Walayda's own voice, ridiculing Ibn Abdus, her fury gave Ibn Abdus his opening,
00:59he schemed against his rival and had him thrown in prison.
01:03Ibn Zaydin escaped and fled to Seville, where he spent the rest of his life writing
01:07some of his most beautiful poetry, longing for a love that never returned.
01:11As for Walayda, she chose Ibn Abdus out of spite, and lived nearly 97 years,
01:17never marrying anyone, her literary salon open until her very last days.
01:22Let's try it.
01:22Let's try it.
01:22Ibn Zaydin.
01:22Ibn Zaydin.
