Abstract
Rābi ca of Ba s ̇ ra (d.801?) appears in texts which suggest that her legend is modelled on those of early Christian penitent courtesans. In contrast, Rābi ca of Syria, who is presented as having lived in the early ninth century, is shown as a married woman who does not have intercourse with her husband: she seems to be a reflected image of Mary the mother of Jesus. The pair of Rābi cas corresponds to various pairs of Marys. A sixteenth-century collection of biographies of Muslim mystics, composed in East Turkestan, contains legends of four obviously imaginary women. Two resemble Mary the mother of Jesus, while a third is a penitent courtesan and a fourth is a singer who repents to become a sexually abstinent wife. More echoes of Rābi ca of Ba s ̇ ra's legend are found in India and North Africa. The opposition between two types of women is rooted in the pre-Christian past, before being found in the New Testament, Christian hagiography and Goethe's Faust.
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