Qiyan

The qiyān (singular qayna) were a social class of women trained as entertainers in the pre-modern Islamic world, who flourished under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates and in al-Andalus. Often called singing slave girls, they were trained in singing, dancing, composing music and verse, reciting anecdotes and calligraphy, and included free women, among them the Abbasid princess Ulayya bint al-Mahdi, as well as enslaved women, who were legally sexually available to their owners. A significant share of the medieval Arabic women poets whose work survives were qiyān. The institution declined with the waning fortunes of the Abbasid Caliphate, as austerity left the arts unfunded.