Emotional Manipulation, Coercion, and Precarity in the Tales of Jamīl and Buthayna

Abstract

This article rereads several canonical anecdotes from the story-cycle of the famed ʿudhrī lover Jamīl b. Maʿmar and his beloved, Buthayna. Rather than flatly accepting the stories’ internal interpretations or the traditional frameworks through which these stories have been interpreted, in this article, I provide an alternative interpretation of the story-cycle by focusing on how Buthayna might have experienced the relationship. This article argues that the Jamīl-Buthayna story-cycle can be read as more open-ended than previously considered, that it explores themes of emotional manipulation and abuse just as much as it deals with abstemious chastity and noble sentiments, that Jamīl might not be the outstanding moral exemplar for the modern reader that the medieval tradition built him up to be. Beyond that, when we read these stories from Buthayna’s—or any beloved’s—perspective, it becomes apparent how far this role might expose an individual to threat, scandal, and precarity within their broader social world.