274 r Amnon Shiloah
poetry and the singing of poems were considered a frightening weapon,
women fulfilled an important role in the tribal battles. They accompanied
their tribal warriors and encouraged them with singing, drumming, and
the utterance of epigrams (short poems ending with satiric attacks against
the enemies). They also marked a victory in battle with special songs and
lamented those who died with dirges giving expression to grief in verses.
Among the women who took part in the hostile campaign against
the prophet, Pellat mentions Hirra the Jewess as one of a south Yemeni
group of women from Hadramaut who joyfully celebrated the death of the
prophet with songs and drums.^5
The View of Mgr. Higinio Anglés (1883–1969)
The following viewpoint of this eminent ecclesiastic Spanish scholar, who
for many years headed the Pontifical Institute for Sacred Music in Rome,
transfers us from the Arabian Peninsula to the Iberian Peninsula where a
musical and cultural symbiosis was established.
In a French article, “La musique juive dans l’Espagne médiévale,”^6
Anglés wrote: “The many centuries of continuous existence of Jewish
communities in Spain, from the biblical period and particularly after the
Destruction of the Temple... until the year 1492, must be considered a
blessing for the art of music in the Iberian Peninsula.”^7
Anglés mentions in this respect the extensive participation of Jewish
musicians in the musical life of their environment, particularly after the
Muslim conquest. Anglés stressed that the Jews were not passive recipi-
ents but rather active contributors who influenced the crystallization of
a cultural symbiosis. From evidence that has come down to us, we know
the name of eighteen Jewish court musicians who were active between the
ninth and fifteenth centuries. Anglés also cites documents attesting to the
existence of unique Jewish music, primarily liturgical. One of those docu-
ments was transmitted by a fifteenth-century chronicler who describes
the special participation of Jews in mourning ceremonies held after the
death of their benefactor, Alfonso, king of Aragon and Naples, in 1458. Ac-
cording to this testimony, at an assembly of Jews held in the town square
in the afternoon hours, six rabbis uttered Hebrew lamentations around
the coffin, and weeping women chanted their own appropriate dirges.^8