The medieval story of al-Nadirah is about the fall of Hatra and its princess, who fell in love with the young king Shapur I while he was besieging the city.
This partially fictional narrative is recorded in Persian and Arabic sources of the early Islamic period, and some of its elements inspired some modern stories. Its general theme has common features with some Greek and Roman legends.
According to early Islamic traditions, al-Nadirah (Arabic : النضيرةan-Naḍīrah; Persian : نضیرهNazirah) was the daughter of al-Dayzan or Satirun (Sanatruq II), the king of Araba. She betrayed the fortified capital, Hatra, to the Persian king Shapur I after seeing and falling in love with him while he was besieging the city. She did this by intoxicating her father and the guards of the city gates, or by revealing to the enemy the talisman on which the city's ownership depended. Shapur I captured and destroyed Hatra and killed its king. He departed with al-Nadirah and married her at Ayn al-Tamr. One night al-Nadirah could not sleep, complaining that her bed is too rough for her. It then turned out that a myrtle leaf was stuck in her skin and was irritating her. Astonished by her softness, Shapur I asked her how did her father bring her up, and she described how well he treated her. Shapur I realizes al-Nadirah's ingratitude towards her father and has her executed in a brutal manner. [1] [2] [3] [4]
The story is mentioned in Arabic and Persian literature and the poetry of the early Islamic period, including al-Tabari's Tarikh al-Tabari , Mirkhond's Rawzat as-Safa' , [1] [2] [5] Ibn Khallikan's Wafayāt al-Aʿyān, [6] and Ferdowsi's Shahnama , where she is recorded as Mālikah (مالكه), daughter of king Tā'ir (طایر), while the Persian king is Shapur II, instead of Shapur I. [7]
According to Theodor Nöldeke, al-Tabari's story is derived from the Greek tale of Scylla and her father Nisos. [5] Some consider it as a Middle Eastern version of the Tarpeia theme. [2] The theme of Al-Nadirah's legend was used in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Princess and the Pea" [8] and Ahmed Shawqi's Waraqat al-As (The Myrtle Leaf). [9]
Abu Ja'far Harun ibn Muhammad al-Mahdi or Harun ibn al-Mahdi, famously known as Harun al-Rashid, was the fifth Abbasid caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate, reigning from September 786 until his death in March 809. His reign is traditionally regarded to be the beginning of the Islamic Golden Age. His epithet "al-Rashid" translates to "the Orthodox", "the Just", "the Upright", or "the Rightly-Guided".
Bahram V, also known as Bahram Gor was the Sasanian King of Kings (shahanshah) from 420 to 438.
Shapur I was the second Sasanian King of Kings of Iran. The dating of his reign is disputed, but it is generally agreed that he ruled from 240 to 270, with his father Ardashir I as co-regent until the death of the latter in 242. During his co-regency, he helped his father with the conquest and destruction of the Arab city of Hatra, whose fall was facilitated, according to Islamic tradition, by the actions of his future wife al-Nadirah. Shapur also consolidated and expanded the empire of Ardashir I, waged war against the Roman Empire, and seized its cities of Nisibis and Carrhae while he was advancing as far as Roman Syria. Although he was defeated at the Battle of Resaena in 243 by Roman emperor Gordian III, he was the following year able to win the Battle of Misiche and force the new Roman Emperor Philip the Arab to sign a favorable peace treaty that was regarded by the Romans as "a most shameful treaty".
Hatra was an ancient city in Upper Mesopotamia located in present-day eastern Nineveh Governorate in northern Iraq. The city lies 290 km (180 mi) northwest of Baghdad and 110 km (68 mi) southwest of Mosul.
Yusuf ibn Ya'qub ibn Ishaq ibn Ibrahim is a prophet mentioned in the Quran and corresponds to Joseph, a person from the Hebrew and Christian Bible who was said to have lived in Egypt before the New Kingdom. Of Jacob's children, Joseph reportedly had the gift of prophecy. Although the narratives of other prophets are presented in a number of surahs, Joseph's complete narrative appears in only one: Yusuf. Said to be the most detailed narrative in the Quran, it contains more details than its biblical counterpart.
Abū al-Faḍl Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Muʿtaṣim bi-ʾllāh, better known by his regnal name al-Mutawakkil ʿalā Allāh was the tenth Abbasid caliph. He succeeded his brother, al-Wathiq, and is known for expanding the empire to its maximum extent. He was deeply religious, and is remembered for discarding the Muʿtazila, ending the Mihna, and releasing Ahmad ibn Hanbal. He is also known for his tough rule, especially with respect to non-Muslim subjects.
Ardashir I, also known as Ardashir the Unifier, was the founder of the Sasanian Empire. He was also Ardashir V of the Kings of Persis, until he founded the new empire. After defeating the last Parthian shahanshah Artabanus IV on the Hormozdgan plain in 224, he overthrew the Parthian dynasty and established the Sasanian dynasty. Afterwards, Ardashir called himself "shahanshah" and began conquering the land that he called Iran.
Al-Asmaʿi, or Asmai; an early philologist and one of three leading Arabic grammarians of the Basra school. Celebrated at the court of the Abbasid caliph, Hārūn al-Rashīd, as polymath and prolific author on philology, poetry, genealogy, and natural science, he pioneered zoology studies in animal-human anatomical science. He compiled an important poetry anthology, the Asma'iyyat, and was credited with composing an epic on the life of Antarah ibn Shaddad. A protégé of Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi and Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala', he was a contemporary and rival of Abū ʿUbaidah and Sibawayhi also of the Basran school.
Al-Hirah was an ancient city in Mesopotamia located south of what is now Kufa in south-central Iraq.
Ya'qūb ibn al-Layth al-Saffār, was a coppersmith and the founder of the Saffarid dynasty of Sistan, with its capital at Zaranj. Under his military leadership, he conquered much of the eastern portions of Greater Iran consisting of modern-day Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan as well as portions of western Pakistan and a small part of Iraq. He was succeeded by his brother, Amr ibn al-Layth.
Wahb ibn Munabbih was a Yemenite Muslim traditionist of Dhimar in Yemen; died at the age of ninety, in a year variously given by Arabic authorities as 725, 728, 732, and 737 C.E. He was a member of Banu Alahrar, a Yemeni of Persian origin. He is counted among the Tabi‘in and a narrator of Isra'iliyat.
In Greek mythology, Scylla was a princess of Megara as daughter of King Nisus.
Abu Hafsa Yazid was a mawla, or servant, of the Umayyad Caliph Marwan ibn al-Hakkam. Yazid's full name is not known; Abu Hafsa means "father of Hafsa".
Imru' al-Qays ibn 'Amr was the second Lakhmid king. His mother was Maria bint 'Amr, the sister of Ka'b al-Azdi. There is debate on his religious affinity: while Theodor Nöldeke noted that Imru' al-Qays ibn 'Amr was not a Christian Irfan Shahid argued for a possible Christian affiliation, noting that Imru'al Qays' Christianity may have been "orthodox, heretical or of the Manichaean type". Furthermore Shahid asserts that the funerary inscription of Imru' al Qays ibn 'Amr lacks Christian formulas and symbols. Al-Tabari states that "he ruled for the Persians in all the land of the Arabs in Iraq, Hejaz and Mesopotamia". Imru' al-Qays is called in his epitaph inscription: "The king of all Arabs who owned the crown," while the same title was the title given to the kings of Hatra. The same inscription mentions that Imru' al-Qays reached as far as Najran and besieged it from the king, Shammar Yahri'sh. Some scholars have identified "Imru' al-Qays ibn 'Amr" in some South Arabian inscriptions with that one. In those same inscriptions his name is mentioned along with Shammar Yahri'sh, the Himyarite king.
Zubaidah bint Ja`far ibn al-Mansur was the best known of the Abbasid princesses, and the wife and double cousin of Harun al-Rashid. She is particularly remembered for the series of wells, reservoirs and artificial pools that provided water for Muslim pilgrims along the route from Baghdad to Mecca and Medina, which was renamed the Darb Zubaidah in her honor. The exploits of her and her husband, Harun al-Rashid, form part of the basis for The Thousand and One Nights.
Abu ʻAmr bin al-ʻAlāʼ al-Basri (Arabic: أبو عمرو بن العلاء; was the Qur'an reciter of Basra, Iraq and an Arab linguist.
Al-Walid ibn Tarif al-Shaybani was an eighth-century Kharijite leader. In 794 he launched a rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate, but was defeated and killed in 795.
ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib was an ancestor of the Abbasids. He was a grandson of al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib and the grandfather of the first two Abbasid caliphs al-Saffah and al-Mansur.
The fall of Hatra, capital of the Kingdom of Hatra under Sanatruq II, took place in the 3rd century after a lengthy siege by the Sasanian king Shapur I. Hatra was plundered and abandoned, and its kingdom dissolved.
Donzel, E. J. Van (1994) princess pea.