Category Archives: A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad

Santa Cruz Poetry Reading

04 Sunday Dec 2011

Posted by in A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, Announcements, Morocco, Poetry, Untold, Updates

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This Thursday evening I’ll talk about poetry and read the new material I’ve been writing.. Over the last year I’ve spoken frequently to promote my book, Untold, which is going into its second Christmas season. I just sent one book to Western Australia, one to Reading, England, and two to Rabat, Morocco, and I still love to talk about the stories and read poems about the first women of Islam.

Here’s a new poem about Fatima, the famous daughter of Prophet Muhammad. I’ve taken a description which comes from a hadith [canonized conversations by Muhammad and his inner circle].

“Fatima would glow. Her (other) name, Zahra, means radiant. Three times each day she shone: on those in morning prayer and on the people in their beds. Their Medina walls turned white. They asked the Prophet why, and he sent them to Fatima’s house where she prayed. The light radiated out from her. The light of her face shone on the people of the heavens and the people of earth…  When she lined up for noon prayer her face shone yellow and all those in the line shared that glow. At sunset, her face took on a reddish color, entered the rooms and the walls glowed pinkish red. The light did not leave her face until Husayn (her youngest son) was born.” Fatima, Daughter of Muhammad, Christopher P. Clohessy, Gorgias Press, 2009.

 Shine, a sonnet
         ~After Robert Frost’s The Silken Tent
 
The shining happened every day, in tent
And hut, in every room. It seemed the breeze
would linger there, as Zahra’s glow relent-
lessly lit up those praying, those at ease.
That light reached sky and earth just like a pole
star, glowing here and gleaming heavenward.
Her face. At dawn so white, it bleached the soul
of doubt. By noon-prayer yellow plucked a cord
of joy. As if the women there were bound
in Zahra’s golden ties of love and thought.
And when the swallows flew as sun’s round
ball turned red and sank below the taut                                   
line of the earth, red stayed in land and air;
Zahra’s face shone conscious and aware.
 

Robert Frost’s poetry t is entwined with this poem. Look at the last words, all 14 of them. If you get a good last word, it helps with the process of a sonnet and in this case each end-word is found in Frost’s famous and beautiful Silken Tent. There may be a term for that kind of poetic borrowing. I don’t know. But writing inside Frost like that felt like moving down a playground slide. It’s a gratifying exercise.

The other poetry I’ve been working with is Blank Verse. I talk about it in my last review G. Schnackenberg’s Heavenly Questions. You can read  my new  poem in iambic pentameter, Bequest, at the on-line Literary Journal, Scythe:  Fall, 2011 –Tamam Kahn <http://scytheliteraryjournal.com/&gt;

I’ve moved the reviews I’ve been writing to a tab at the top of this site called, “REVIEWS.”  I hope you will visit the authors I am sharing there. <>

Poetry Night at Lincoln High~

09 Saturday Apr 2011

Posted by in A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, Events, Poetry, Untold

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Poetry Night at the Black Box Theater

Last night Rachel and I drove to San Jose. I’d been invited to read six minutes of Spoken Word poems at the Black Box Theater at Lincoln High School. Jael and Anthony invited me back in January, when I read at Willow Glen Library. I said YES! without hesitation.

Tamam and Jael Cruz, the host

Some of the SJ Poetry Center folks were reading there: Pushpa, Dennis, and a couple others. The rest of the poets were students from Lincoln. This may have been the inaugural Poetry Night – benefiting the center for the arts. I donated 11 CDs with poetry and spoken word to be sold for $5. with proceeds going to Lincoln High Arts!

The Black Box Theater is a well designed space and I guess there were more than 60 students there, Gimo was the MC, and the event began a short while after the “sound check” and earlier than the announced time. There was a camera crew, and we signed release forms, but there was no mic. Didn’t need one.

I was lucky to go early in the evening, after 4 or 5 students, and announced as the first “special guest.” I told them “I like history and I do spoken word, so I’m putting them together tonight. About your own history –– once it may have been heartache and pain. Later it became something to talk about!” I introduced “Uncle Waraka”  and shouted it out, talking about Muhammad as “the Propheci’d Man.” Next came “Aisha and the Battle of the Camel.” This poem begins : “Hey Euphrates, I’m your tigress! I don’t digress but I risk speaking of the year 656….”

The audience was asked to click their fingers instead of clapping, so the recording people didn’t have to deal with  bursts of sound.  Pushpa read some good poems. One line of hers was: “I’d rather have poetry than oatmeal for breakfast.”

I felt it was an honor to read there. I hope this becomes a regular event. Thanks Jael and Anthony. Lets hear it for Lincoln High poets!<>

CDs for sale, "The Women with Muhammad"

Untold & the Book Awards

03 Thursday Mar 2011

Posted by in A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, Announcements, book awards, Events, Poetry, Untold

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the author on a camel in the Moroccan Sahara

I am curious to find an award category for my book: Untold. Never mind actually winning, I’m just looking for a match.  In the words of the late Ogden Nash, the book is a churkendoose – chicken, turkey, duck and goose. It is poetry, but it’s not a poetry book. It is biography and academic history, and yes, women’s studies. The alchemy is powerful and forges it into a what? Non-fiction  women’s historical biography.

The words “Prophet Muhammad” are in the title. That makes it  a bit edgy like Black History, only Martin Luther King is more PC with many Americans.

I love this book because it moves toward easing tension between the Islamic world and the USA. Is there a slot for that important job in the arena of awards? Then there is the chapter on the Jewish wives. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone acknowledged that Prophet Muhammad had two Jewish wives? Israel, for instance? You can  see how this book may be sitting alone somewhere.

California first lady Maria Shriver introduces Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning poet Mary Oliver (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

There’s always big American prizes for literature and poetry, with Mary Oliver hugging Maria Shriver on the right. Here are some less well known acknowledgements:

FAB Book Award (Burntwood Secondary school award – winner chosen by the students). I love the name of the award and wish I could talk to them.

Brass Crescent Award (this promotes the best writing of the Muslim Webblogs). That’s good, but then there’s The Frederick J. Streng Book Award, limited to Buddhist – Christian books.

The esteemed Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize…”understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures…” But I’ll bet you need to be a person of color to even be considered for that.

Here’s one that I’m sure has never been won by a woman: The Sheik Zayed Book Award, “one of the most prestigious and well-funded prizes in the Arab world,” named after the deceased ruler of Abu Dhabi. Last year’s literature winner was  Dr. Ibrahim al-Kawni, Libyan author of The Call of What Was Far.

The Humbolt Research Award is for an academic. The Middle East Studies Association (MESA from University of Arizona) listed more than thirty books on topics that seemed similar to Untold, but every single book had a University Press behind the title, like the poetry prizes awarded only to MFA graduates. Forget it.

For The Arab American Book Award you need to be an Arab – it’s not books on Arab themes in America.

The only possible thing I found was IBA International Book Awards, “Honoring Knowledge, Creativity, Wisdom  & Global Cooperation through the Written Word.”  That sounds good. The deadline is April 30, 2011.

Sometimes it feels good to dare to dream.  <>

Joe Milford Poetry Show – Tamam Kahn guest poet!

01 Tuesday Feb 2011

Posted by in A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, Joe Milford, Poetry, Untold

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Saturday afternoon I was lucky to be the guest poet on a podcast of The Joe Milford Poetry Show. I am honored to be listed in the show archive with poets I admire: Forrest Gander, CD Wright, Tony Hoagland, Robert Pinsky, Mark Strand, Jo McDougall, Franz Wright and others.

Joe has an easy-going manner that makes it feel like the two of us were having a cup of something at a southern coffeehouse with comfortable chairs. Actually, I was in my office in California and he was in Georgia. The podcast is available to download, but since it is long –– an hour and a half –– I’ll share some highlights here.

I mentioned that I had spent the last year speaking about the wives of Prophet Muhammad and the misconceptions about Islam held by many Americans. Now I had a chance to read from the 70 poems in my book, Untold, and talk about poetry.

I spoke of the “prosimetrum,” a mysterious word very few people know. This word was a gift from Fred Chappell, when I needed a format for my book: a narrative with lyric poems dropped into the prose. Joe mentioned the Japanese version. I brought up author, Boethius.

I was glad to mention that the hadith (incidents and anecdotes of Arabic history about Prophet Muhammad and his companions) is full of what poets call “prompts,” vivid keys that open the container which holds back the flow of words in many of us. I started this part with a poem I’ve never read publicly. The prompt is: “I have no urge for husbands, but I want Allah to raise me up as your wife on the Day of Rising.” These are the words of Sawda. Here’s the poem:

up until the Day Of Rising

Sawda dreamed Muhammad

stepped on her neck; his instep

soft, the pressure firm

and it meant yes, this seal, this stamp

of God’s Prophet. They say

that his grief that year ran deep

his need, a woman who could

keep his house and school his girls —

the widow Sawda?

Oh Lord, she thought, am I to marry such as he!

Dawn does not come twice

to wake any woman

but once she woke, Sawda came

to rule his hearth,

the big, unmigratory wife

with the sloshy walk. She left a wake.

Her footprints pressed down

deep into the soil when she walked out.

She’d puff her cheeks with effort,

find a doorframe she could lean on.

Her nights-with-Muhammad

lessened, moved to storage,

and were abandoned to ‘A’isha

as she lagged behind.

The word divorce swam                                  

in her brain; she feared

a life apart from him.

As for her faith, she held it,

made ablution from a pail,

drew her wet hands over her hair,

but bowing down? Well then,

her knees might fail her

or a nosebleed start. She trembled,

sucked on dates and rolled her eyes:

I have no urge for husbands, but I want Allah

to raise me up as your wife on the Day of Rising.

Muhammad laughed. He saw

she was on her laborious way up,

and who would wish to stop her?        <>     <>     <>

I spoke of my good friend, poet Wendy Taylor Carlisle, who read every word of my book and offered many suggestions – which made the writing much better. I read a poem she is fond of – owner’s manual: the howdah: <https://completeword.wordpress.com/poems/>.

I think Joe and I did an good poetry show, especially under the circumstances. He admitted to a sore throat and a migraine, and I had just left my husband recovering from surgery, at a hospital in San Francisco. Thankfully he is home now and healing well. My thanks to Joe for making this happen.  Here’s the link : <http://joemilfordpoetryshow.com/&gt;

Mentioned by Marcia Z. Nelson

06 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by in A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, Marcia Z. Nelson, Poetry

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Something would not let me celebrate until I saw the words in print, the list. I’m a person who trusts my eyes more than my ears. For over 24 hours I thought I was an author on the top 10 list of religion books of 2010 from Publisher’s Weekly! I did mention it to my husband, Shabda, who announced it to 60 or more people. They cheered. But it didn’t feel right. Today I found page 5 with the real list. Untold is not listed. I’m reminded of my friend, song-writer Robbie Long, who had a song picked up by Whitney Houston in the day when she was nearly as popular as Lady Gaga. He could buy a house and go on vacation with the money that came with this kind of exposure. At the very last moment a decision was made to cut the song from the album, the song Whitney Houston had already lent her voice to…

The title of the radio show: A year in Books: What’s Hot (December 30, 2010.)

Here’s what happened. My friend, author Lea Terhune, heard a program called “Interfaith Voices” out of Washington DC. She wrote me that Untold was mentioned so I found the podcast.

Host, Maureen Fiedler, was interviewing Marcia Z. Nelson, Religious Review Editor of Publisher’s Weekly. “How do you decide on the top 10?” She is asked. “Twenty-five reviewers offer a review of merit, a starred review of the best from 250 or so books reviewed by PW over the last year.” The book must be “distinctive, well-written, and surprising.” Nelson goes on to mention three or four of the chosen books. This is followed by Fiedler’s questions about trends, then books on Islam. Without the list to refer to, I wrongly assumed we were still on the subject of top ten books. The next question was: “How about books on Islam?” Deepak Chopra’s Muhammad “was an interesting pairing of subject and author.” “Untold, A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad –– what was remarkable about it was how the writer incorporated poetry as part of her narrative. The book was really very distinctive.”     I’d call that an honorable mention, especially those words from Marcia Z. Nelson.

As for this… dream on!

The Publisher’s Weekly Top Religious Books of the Year 2010

Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion ~ Gregory Boyle

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India ~ William Dalrymple

Fishers of Men: The Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest ~ Adam Elenbaas

The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam ~ Eliza Griswold

Hannah’s Child ~ Stanley Hauerwas

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years ~ Diarmaid McCulloch

American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us ~ Robert Putnam and David Campbell

Bread of Angels: A Journey to Love and Faith ~ Stephanie Saldaña

Hillel: If Not Now, When? ~ Joseph Telushkin

Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference ~Desmond M. Tutu and Mpho A. Tutu

Lesley Hazelton – the Qur’an – with standing ovation

06 Monday Dec 2010

Posted by in A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, Lesley Hazelton, Uncategorized

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I have rarely anticipated a video, no – I have to say NEVER looked forward to a video more than this one! Let me take you back to the middle of September. I was in Seattle on my book tour, and was invited to spend an evening with author Lesley Hazelton at her houseboat on Lake Union. While preparing a soufle, my friend read me the script she was working on for this nine-minute talk to the forthcoming TED x Ranier event at Seattle’s elegant Benaroya Hall on 10/10/10. She is speaking on the Qur’an. As of today, this video has more than 114,000 hits on youtube!

The Qur’an seems to magnetize more twenty-first century misinformation, rage, and fear than any other book. I have been among those people –non-Muslims as well as Muslims – who long for well-considered, intelligent, subtle, as well as universal thoughts on this sacred Scripture. It is a puzzle to so many of us.

Lesley draws us into her discoveries, confronting the stereotypes: “Part of the problem, I think, is that we imagine that the Qur’an can be read as we usually read a book, as though we can curl up with it on a rainy afternoon with a bowl of popcorn within reach as though God …were just another author on the bestseller list.”

She set about reading four English translations side by side, with a transliteration and the original Arabic. “Every time I thought I was beginning to get a handle on the Qur’an, that feeling of ­– I get it now! – it would slip away overnight, and I’d come back in the morning wondering if I was lost in a strange land.”

She speaks of paradise. Forget the virgins. “It’s fecundity, it’s plenty. It’s gardens, watered by running streams.” Her delightful and brilliant talk is received with – yes – a standing ovation.

May the way open for careful, and respectful discussion of this sacred book. I invite you to join me in spreading the word of  lesley’s excellent video.

Lesley Hazelton

Lesley Hazelton is author of several books including After the Prophet, the epic story of the Shia Sunni Split and Mary, A Flesh and Blood Biography of the Virgin Mary. Visit Lesley’s blog: < http://accidentaltheologist.com/

Untold and After the Prophet are both discussed here on Bill’s Faith Matters” weblog Kansas City Star:

<http://billtammeus.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/12/12-1-10.html>

UNTOLD: Author Interview

13 Friday Aug 2010

Posted by in A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, bookstores, Marrakech, Morocco, Poetry, Sufi, Untold, Updates

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Recent news about UNTOLD:

~ UNTOLD won an International Book Award for 2011.

~ UNTOLD was translated into Indonesian and may be in bookstores there as “Untold Stories,” Kaysa Publishers, and is being considered by Garnet Press, UK.

Monkfish Publishing House interviews Tamam Kahn (2010 interview):

Q: What prompted you to write about the wives of Muhammad?

Tamam Kahn: As I traveled in North Africa and the Middle East, I felt authority and earthy power from the women who recited sacred words and sang poetry about Muhammad and his family. I wanted to discover if Muhammad’s wives had that same fierce, elegant energy. I began to read about them. I found that – according to traditional history – they did.

Q: Why do you feel this information is valuable or necessary at this time? What does it have to teach us?

Tamam Kahn: This book is meant to balance History and Her-story.  My wish is that the women in these pages may emerge as vivid individuals vocalizing the first years of what came to be Islam; that they will replace the stiff and submissive stereotypes the media often displays. In this book, we see that Muhammad was married to women born into Jewish, Christian and pagan faiths. “Untold” may inspire us to be curious and keep a flexible attitude, and if we do, we may discover all people have the same hopes, dreams, fears, and disappointments.

Q: Do you consider yourself a Muslim?

Tamam Kahn: I would call myself a spiritual seeker who regards Islam as the path of peaceful surrender to the One. For me, a Muslim is a person who walks that path. This was the “Islam” embraced by the women I write about. I am a follower of the Message of Divine Unity as exemplified by the great Sufis such as Rumi, Hafiz, and Rabi‘a of Basra. They carry a sacred outlook not limited to the form, the time, or the place.

Q: How have Muslims responded to your research and publication?

Tamam Kahn: A California Muslim woman hosting a local radio show wrote me that Untold brought these women to life in a way that no standard biography did. Through the poetry, she now imagined them as real flesh and blood women who were courageous, jealous, and fierce – in a very human way. For those who question my right to write about the Prophet’s wives, I would say I have great respect for each woman and admiration for the life they shared. That respect has opened doors that made this book possible.

Q: Does your book have a message for Muslims?

Tamam Kahn: As-salaam ‘alaykum. This book greets you on the path of peace. Come and enjoy the stories of your Prophet and his family.

Q: Does your book have significance for non-Muslims?

Tamam Kahn: This book is about a forgotten piece of history that needs to be brought out and honored. But for me it is not about Muslim and non-Muslim. It’s about our human family and the strength of women. This book may bring ease to a mother whose children attend school with Muslim children, the shopper served by a grocery checker in a scarf, the office worker whose boss has a Muslim name. CNN tells us that nearly one in four people in the world today is a Muslim, although Fox Network said it was one in five.

Q: How has the process of researching, writing, and publishing Untold changed your life?

Tamam Kahn: I’ve spent my life changing my life, so this is just another chapter.  There is a big difference between holding a manuscript and reading from your own book. This book seems to have “a life of its own.” I feel like I’m just tagging along. The directive that these women need to be known is an important one. From the opening poem: “I am here with a message: conversation with these women will never end.”

Q: Can you tell us about the research for Untold?

Tamam Kahn: I was hooked as soon as I began to read contemporary authors, Karen Armstrong and Martin Lings. From there I went to the oldest sources such as Ibn Ishaq. I traveled to Syria and received my own library card from the Al-Azar National Library in Damascus. When I’d researched and written a few chapters, I met with Islamic Scholar Arthur Buehler back in America, and he was moved by what I was doing and offered to help, not only by correcting the Arabic, but also suggesting early scholarly material that was respected in the genre of what is called “the hadith literature.” In that way I had the advantage of an academic checkpoint.

Q: Talk about the form you use in this book – narrative prose interspersed with poetry.

Tamam Kahn: At one point I had seventy poems and notebooks of research on the wives and daughters of Prophet Muhammad. I thought I’d find someone to write the back-story. I asked the wonderful master writer and Poet Laureate of North Carolina, Fred Chappell, what he would do if he were in my place. He suggested a “prosimetrum.” No one I knew was familiar with that term. It was used by Boethius in the fifth century – in his Latin Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius placed poems – each like a tiny well – in the prose narrative thread. The Consolation influenced Western Medieval thought, Dante and Chaucer. The form is generally not in use today, but it served my purpose beautifully!

Q: Who should read this book?

Tamam Kahn: This book is for anyone who wants to transcend stereotypes about Islam. Untold paints this early history with a bold, broad stroke, including Prophet Muhammad’s close and colorful contact with Pagan, Jewish, and Christian women who became his wives. Like Reading Lolita in Tehran, Untold depicts Muslim women in a new light, with focus on their intelligence and creative outlook. Book clubs will find this is an optimistic book that empowers women –– the ones who are in it and the ones reading from it! After studying Untold in an Islamic Studies class, one student was inspired to write a term paper about the first wife, Khadija. I leave a trail of research markers, so the book can be enjoyed as simple biography or questioned and investigated further. Untold is for people who discover that they want to know –– who are these women?

For more information or to arrange an interview with Tamam Kahn, please contact: <tamam@completeword.com> 


The new Untold Trailer

09 Sunday May 2010

Posted by in A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, Poetry, Untold

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I had this idea to create a book trailer after Diane Lockward posted one on the WOMPO poetry listserve. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it would help put a face to a book, the way movie trailers give a thumbnail of the film. I talked about it to all my close tec people and gathered pix and video clips, then finally we were ready and Shabda put the ideas together on imovie. Here it is –– 4 minutes with a soundtrack mostly by Hamza El Din and even some spoken word. I think this will be useful as the Publisher and publicist get ready to send UNTOLD out into the world of bookstores, etc….