Hujayja was a sixth century warrior poetess from the tribe of the Banu Shayban. Modern scholars have often assumed that women’s poetry from the Jahiliya was confined to the realm of marthiyya (blood lament), thus rendering an image of women from this time as powerless, passive victims. In contrast, Hujayja defies the orientalist conception of Arab female powerlessness. In her poetry, she takes an active leadership role between her tribe and the Sasanian empire: she rallies her troops to protect a female refugee, she leads her men into battle, negotiates with ambassadors, persuades Sasanian defectors, reenergizes the beleaguered soldiers, and secures victory for her tribe. This paper will examine Hujayja’s poetry, which forms a mini-saga of conflict and negotiation between the Banu Shayban and the Sasanians. I will focus specifically on the rhetorical device of punning in Hujayja’s oral performance and I will show how she manipulates this tool to create an additional dimension to her speech, which she uses to persuade or dissuade audiences. I will use the performance theories of Richard Bauman and John Miles Foley to show how performers, such as Hujayja, use punning to appeal to their audiences and elicit desired reactions. By using these interactive approaches to performance, we, as seen through the case study of Hujayja, supplement traditional humanistic scholarship with a deeper appreciation of the agency that Arab women poets exhibited in their works. Through the study of rhetorical devices, such as punning, we are able to recognize the artistic virtuosity they brought to their work and illuminate the role of Arab women as poetesses in Jahili society. Thus the study of Hujayja and her skillful performance informs and challenges the common discourse surrounding these women to include action, agency, and power, which compels us to re-evaluate our assumptions about the division between masculine and feminine forms of poetic expression in the Jahiliya.