Layla al-Ahyaliyya, poetessa e personaggio tra esemplarità ed eversione

Laylā al-Aḫyaliyya (d. 84/704 ca.) is one of the most prominent Umayyad women poets. She gained fame not only as an author of elegies, satires and encomiums, but also as a protagonist of a romantic saga with the poet Tawba ibn al-Ḥumayyir, and witty verbal exchanges with authorities and poets. In modern times, her unconventional figure appeared in Zaynab Fawwāz’s biographical dictionary of famous women al-Durr al-Manūr (1894). This study aims to sketch out the figure of Laylā in ancient sources and to analyse how Fawwāz reused this information to outline her as a character between exemplarity and subversion, thus making Laylā part of her project of building an Arabo-Islamic feminine heritage to inspire the women of her age.