The qiyan — singing slave-girls

The qiyan were singing slave women, a social institution in the early Abbasid period, as Ahmad Amin describes them in Duha al-Islam. ¹

Their masters and the teachers of singing trained them in melodies and voices. Ibrahim al-Mawsili taught his slave women the art. ¹

Some qiyan belonged to the caliph, the princes, and the wealthy, who gave them to one another as gifts out of a fondness for variety. Others were common qiyan owned by a broker who displayed them in the houses of those who hired them, so that young men might listen to them, and paid for their upkeep. An example is the house of Ibn Ramni in Kufa, and his singer Salama al-Zarqa', who was visited by Rawh ibn Hatim al-Muhallabi, Muhammad ibn al-Ash'ath, Ma'n ibn Za'ida, and Ibn al-Muqaffa'. ¹

The book Kitab al-Aghani is full of their biographies, among them 'Arib, Mutayyam, Badhl, Dhat al-Khal, and Farida. Some of them were poets and writers, and the price of one of them reached two thousand dinars and then three thousand. ¹