[In the following excerpt, Arberry summarizes the historical and literary contexts of Ibn Hazm’s The Ring of the Dove and presents his translation of the author's preliminary excursus to the work, which details its structure and approach to the subject of love.]

PRELIMINARY EXCURSUS

[BY IBN HAZM]

I have divided this treatise into thirty chapters. Of these, ten are concerned with the root-principles of Love, the first being the immediately following chapter on the Signs of Love. After this comes a chapter on Those who have fallen in Love while Asleep; then a chapter on Those who have fallen in Love through a Description; next a chapter on Those who have fallen in Love at First Sight; a chapter on Those whose Love has only become True after Long Association; a chapter on Allusion by Words; a chapter on Hinting with the Eyes; a chapter on Correspondence; and lastly (of these first ten) a chapter on the Messenger.

The second section of the book comprises twelve chapters on the accidents of Love, and its praiseworthy and blameworthy attributes. (Here I should remark in parenthesis that Love is in fact an accident, and as such cannot properly be said itself to be susceptible to accidents; Love is an attribute, and attributes may not be further qualified. I am therefore speaking metaphorically in discussing Love's accidents and attributes, putting the attribute itself in the place of the thing qualified thereby. When we say and feel that one accident is greater or smaller, more beautiful or uglier in reality than another accident, according to our apprehension of that reality, we recognize that accidents differ from each other, in terms of excess or deficiency, in respect only of their visible and knowable essence; there is no question of numerical quantity or physical partition being relevant to them, seeing that they do not occupy any space.) This section is made up first of a chapter on the Helping Friend, then a chapter on Union, then a chapter on Concealing the Secret, and after that chapters on Revealing and Divulging the Secret, on Compliance, and on Opposition; a chapter on Those who have fallen in Love with a certain Quality and thereafter have not loved any other different to it; and chapters on Fidelity, on Betrayal, on Wasting Away, and on Death.

In the third part of the essay there are six chapters on the misfortunes which enter into Love. These chapters deal respectively with the Reproacher, the Spy, the Slanderer, Breaking Off, Separation, and Forgetting. Two of these six chapters are matched each with a corresponding chapter (of those already mentioned) on an opposite subject: the chapter on the Reproacher is paired with the chapter on the Helping Friend, and the chapter on Breaking Off complements the chapter on Union. The other four have no contrasting themes in Love's repertory. The chapters on the Spy and the Slanderer have no opposites, except their removal altogether. The real nature of opposites is that when the opposite to a given condition occurs, the original state is removed, however much the schoolmen may have differed in their views of the matter; we would have thrashed the question out thoroughly, but for the fear of dilating at too great length upon a topic not absolutely material to the present book. As for the Chapter on Separation, its true opposite would be contiguity of dwellings; but contiguity is not one of the themes of Love, which we are at present engaged in discussing. And the opposite of the chapter on Forgetting is really Love itself, since forgetting means the removal and non-existence of Love.

Finally come two chapters to terminate the discourse: a chapter discussing the Vileness of Sinning, and a chapter on the Virtue of Continence. I have planned the matter thus so that the conclusion of our exposition and the end of our discussion may be an exhortation to obedience to Almighty God, and a recommendation to do good and to eschew evil; which last commandment is indeed a duty imposed upon all believers.

Notwithstanding all this, in setting out certain of these chapters we have in fact varied the order apportioned in the course of this opening chapter of the treatise. We have arranged them serially from the beginning to the conclusion of the story according to their due right of precedence, their gradations, and their actuality, proceeding methodically from the first degree to the last. We have also placed each pair of opposites side by side; as a result, the proper sequence has been departed from in a few chapters. I ask God's help again.

My actual disposition of the material is therefore as follows. I have placed first and foremost this chapter in the middle of which we now are; it comprises the preliminary excursus, the division of the chapters, and a discourse on the Nature of Love. This is followed by the chapter on the Signs of Love; then the chapter on Those who have fallen in Love through a Description; then the chapter on Those who have fallen in Love at First Sight; then the chapter on Those who have only fallen in Love after Long Association; then the chapter on Those who have fallen in Love with a certain Quality and thereafter have not loved any other different to it; then the chapter on Allusion by Words; then the chapter on Hinting with the Eyes; then the chapter on Correspondence; then the chapter on the Messenger; then the chapter on Concealing the Secret; then the chapter on Divulging the Secret; then the chapter on Compliance; then the chapter on Opposition; then the chapter on the Reproacher; then the chapter on the Helpful Brother; then the chapter on the Spy; then the chapter on the Slanderer; then the chapter on Union; then the chapter on Breaking Off; then the chapter on Fidelity; then the chapter on Betrayal; then the chapter on Separation; then the chapter on Contentment; then the chapter on Wasting Away; then the chapter on Forgetting; then the chapter on Death; then the chapter on the Vileness of Sinning; and lastly the chapter on the Virtue of Continence.

OF THE NATURE OF LOVE

Of Love—may God exalt you!—the first part is jesting, and the last part is right earnestness. So majestic are its divers aspects, they are too subtle to be described; their reality can only be apprehended by personal experience. Love is neither disapproved by Religion, nor prohibited by the Law; for every heart is in God's hands.

Many rightly-guided caliphs and orthodox imams have been lovers. Of those who have lived in our beloved Andalusia I may mention ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu‘awiya, the lover of Da‘ja; al-Hakam ibn Hisham; ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Hakam, whose passion for Tarub the mother of his son ‘Abd Allah is more famous among men than the very sun itself; Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman, well-known admirer of Ghizlan who bore him ‘Uthman, al-Qasim and al-Mutarrif; and al-Hakam al-Mustansir, adorer of Subh mother of Hisham al-Mu’aiyad Billah, who refused to interest himself in any other child but hers.

Such instances are extremely numerous; and but for the rightful claims of our rulers upon the respect of all Moslems, so that we ought to recount concerning them only such stories as illustrate martial resolution and the propagation of the faith—and their amours were after all conducted in the privacy of their palaces and in the bosom of their families, so that it would not be at all seemly to report on them—but for this I would certainly have introduced not a few anecdotes illustrating their part in the love-business. As for their men of State and pillars of Empire, their tender romances are indeed innumerable; the most recent instance being the affair we were witnessing only yesterday between al-Muzaffar ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Abi ‘Amir and Wahid the cheesemonger's daughter, a grand passion which so transported that great nobleman that he actually married the girl; she was subsequently ‘inherited’ by the grand vizier ‘Abd Allah ibn Maslama after the fall of the ‘Amirids; and when ‘Abd Allah in his turn was put to death, she became the consort of a Berber chieftain. I was told of a similar instance too by Abu ’l-‘Aish ibn Maimun al-Qurashi al-Husaini: Nizar ibn Ma‘add, ruler of Egypt, would not look upon his son Mansur ibn Nizar—his successor on the throne, the one who claimed to be a god—for quite a time after he was born, so as to spare the feelings of a certain slave-girl with whom he was deeply in love; yet he had no other male issue but this child to inherit his kingdom and keep his memory green.

Of the saints and learned doctors of the faith who lived in past ages and times long ago, some there are whose love lyrics are sufficient testimony to their passion, so that they require no further notice. It will be enough to mention only one name: ‘Ubaid Allah ibn ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Utba ibn Mas‘ud was famous for his tender verses, and he, as we remember, was one of the celebrated Seven Jurists of Medina. As for Ibn ‘Abbas, a single sentence once uttered by him amply dispenses with any need for further quotation; he pronounced the weighty judgement, “This man was slain by love: there is therefore no case for bloodwit or retaliation.”

Concerning the nature of Love men have held various and divergent opinions, which they have debated at great length. For my part I consider Love as a conjunction between scattered parts of souls that have become divided in this physical universe, a union effected within the substance of their original sublime element. I do not share the view advanced by Muhammad ibn Dawud—God have mercy on his soul!—who followed certain philosophers in declaring that spirits are segmented spheres; rather do I suppose an affinity of their vital forces in the supernal world which is their everlasting home, and a close approximation in the manner of their constitution. We know the secret of commingling and separation in created things to be simply a process of union and disassociation; every form always cries out for its corresponding form; like is ever at rest with like. Congeneity has a perceptible effect and a visible influence; repulsion of opposites, accord between similars, attraction of like for like—these are facts taking place all round us. How much more then should the same factors operate within the soul, whose world is pure and etherial, whose substance is volatile and perfectly poised, whose constituent principle is so disposed as to be intensely sensitive to harmony, inclination, yearning, aversion, passionate desire and antipathy. All this is common knowledge; it is immediately observable in the moods which successively control every man, and to which we all accommodate ourselves successfully. Allah Himself says, “It is He that created you of one soul, and fashioned thereof its spouse, that he might find repose in her” (Koran VII 189). Be it noted that the reason God assigns for man's reposing in woman is that she was made out of him.

If the cause of Love were physical beauty, the consequence would be that no body defective in any shape or form would attract admiration; yet we know of many a man actually preferring the inferior article, though well aware that another is superior, and quite unable to turn his heart away from it. Again, if Love were due to a harmony of characters, no man would love a person who was not of like purpose and in concord with him. We therefore conclude that Love is something within the soul itself.

Sometimes, it is true, Love comes as a result of a definite cause outside the soul, but then it passes away when the cause itself disappears: one who is fond of you because of a certain circumstance will turn his back on you when that motive no longer exists. I have made this point in the verses which follow.

My love for thee shall aye endure
As now, most perfect and most pure;
It brooks no increase, no decline,
Since it's complete, and wholly thine.
I cannot any cause discover,
Except my will, to be thy lover,
And boldly challenge any man
To name another, if he can.
For sure, when any thing we see
Of its own self sole cause to be,
That being, being of that thing,
Lives ever undiminishing.
But when we find its origin
Is other than the thing it's in,
Our losing that which made it be
Annihilates it instantly.

This statement is confirmed by the fact that Love, as we know, is of various kinds. The noblest sort of Love is that which exists between persons who love each other in God; either because of an identical zeal for the righteous work upon which they are engaged, or as the result of a harmony in sectarian belief and principles, or by virtue of a common possession of some noble knowledge. Next to this is the love which springs from kinship; then the love of familiarity and the sharing of identical aims; the love of comradeship and acquaintance; the love which is rooted in a benevolent regard for one's fellow; the love that results from coveting the loved one's worldly elevation; the love that is based upon a shared secret which both must conceal; love for the sake of getting enjoyment and satisfying desire; and passionate love, that has no other cause but that union of souls to which we have referred above.

All these varieties of Love come to an end when their causes disappear, and increase or diminish with them; they are intensified according to the degree of their proximity, and grow languid as their causes draw further and further away. The only exception is the Love of true passion, which has the mastery of the soul: this is the love which passes not away save with death. You will find a man far advanced in years, who swears that he has forgotten love entirely; yet when you remind him of it, he calls that love back to mind, and is rejoiced; he is filled with youthful desire; his old emotion returns to him; his yearning is mightily stirred. In none of the other sorts of love does anything like this happen: that mental preoccupation, that derangement of the reason, that melancholia, that transformation of settled temperaments, and alteration of natural dispositions, that moodiness, that sighing, and all the other symptoms of profound agitation which accompany passionate love.

All this proves that true Love is a spiritual approbation, a fusion of souls. It may be objected, that if Love were as I have described, it would be exactly equal in both the parties concerned, since the two parts would be partners in the act of union and the share of each would be the same. To this I reply, that the objection is indeed well-founded; but the soul of the man who loves not one who loves him is beset on all sides by various accidents which occlude, and veils that encompass it about, those earthy temperaments which now overlay it, so that his soul does not sense that part which was united with it before it came to occupy its present lodging-place. Had his soul been liberated from these restrictions, the two would have been equal in their experience of union and love. As for the lover, his soul is indeed free and aware of where that other is that shared with it in ancient proximity; his soul is ever seeking for the other, striving after it, searching it out, yearning to encounter it again, drawing it to itself if might be as a magnet draws the iron.

The essential force of the magnet, when in contact with the essential force of the iron, is not so strong or so refined as to seek out after the iron, for all that the iron is of the self-same kind and element; it is the force of the iron, by virtue of its natural strength, that reaches out after its kind and is drawn towards it. Movement always takes place from the side of the more powerful. The force of the iron, when left to itself and not prevented by any restriction, seeks out what resembles itself and with single-minded devotion, so to speak, hastens towards it; this it does naturally and necessarily, not out of free choice and set purpose. When you hold back the iron in your hand it is no longer attracted to the magnet, because the force it possesses is not sufficient to overcome the stronger force holding it back. When the particles of iron are numerous, one group of these is fully occupied with the other and all are adequately satisfied by their own kind, and do not care to seek after that small portion of their forces standing at a distance from them. When the mass of the magnet is large, however, and its forces are a match for all the forces lying within the iron's mass, the iron reverts to its accustomed nature.

Similarly the fire which is latent in the flint, in spite of the force belonging to fire to unite and to summon together its scattered parts wherever they may be, does not in fact issue from the flint until the latter is struck. When the two masses press and rub closely against each other, the fire is liberated; otherwise it remains latent within the flint, and does not show or manifest itself at all.

My theory is further proved by the fact that you will never find two persons in love with one another without there being some likeness and agreement of natural attributes between them. This condition must definitely obtain, even if only to a small degree; the more numerous the resemblances, the greater will be their congeneity and the firmer their affection. It is only necessary to look for this, and you will see it quite plainly on all hands. The Messenger of Allah confirmed the matter when he said, “Spirits are regimented battalions: those which know one another associate familiarly together, while those which do not know one another remain at variance.” A saint is reported as having stated, “The spirits of believers know one another.”

For the same reason Hippocrates was not distressed when he was told of a man deficient in virtue who was in love with him. The matter being remarked upon, he said, “He would not have fallen in love with me if I had not accorded with him in some aspect of my character.” Plato relates how a certain king threw him in prison unjustly, and he did not cease to argue his case until he proved his innocence, and the king realised that he had been unjust to him. The minister who had charged himself with conveying Plato's words to the monarch exclaimed, “O king, it has now become evident to you that he is innocent; what more lies between you and him?” The king answered, “Upon my life, I have nothing against him, except that I feel within myself an inexplicable disgust with him.” The minister reported this saying to Plato. The latter remarked, continuing his story, “So I was obliged to search within my soul and my character for something resembling his soul and his character, which might be a point of correspondence between us. I considered his character, and observed that he loved equity and hated injustice. I diagnosed the same disposition within myself; and no sooner did I set this point of agreement into motion and confront his soul with this characteristic which he possessed in common with me, than he gave orders for my release.” Plato relates that the king then said to his minister, “All the antipathy against him that I formerly felt within me has now been dissolved.”

As for what causes Love in most cases to choose a beautiful form to light upon, it is evident that the soul itself being beautiful, it is affected by all beautiful things, and has a yearning for perfect symmetrical images; whenever it sees any such image, it fixes itself upon it; then, if it discerns behind that image something of its own kind, it becomes united and true love is established. If however the soul does not discover anything of its own kind behind the image, its affection goes no further than the form, and remains mere carnal desire. Indeed, physical forms have a wonderful faculty of drawing together the scattered parts of men's souls.

I have read in the first book of the Pentateuch how the Prophet Jacob, during the days when he was watching his uncle Laban's sheep, to be a dowry for his uncle's daughter, entered into an engagement with Laban that he should share with him the offspring of the flock; all the lambs that were of a single colour would belong to Jacob, while every lamb born with a white blaze was to fall to Laban. Now Jacob would lay hold of the tree branches and strip off the bark of a half, and leave the other half as they were; then he cast all into the water whither the sheep came down to drink. He would contrive to send the pregnant ewes down to drink at that time; and they would give birth in due course half to single-coloured lambs, and half to lambs marked with a blaze.

It is also related that a certain physiognomist had brought before him a black child, whose parents were both white. He examined his features, and saw that the infant undoubtedly belonged to the pair; then he desired to be acquainted with the place where the parents had lain down together. He was brought into the house where their marriage-bed was, and observed facing the woman's field of vision the picture of a black man painted on the wall. He at once remarked to the father, “It is on account of this picture that you have had such a son born to you.”

The poets of the scholastics frequently touch on this theme in their compositions, addressing the external object of the vision as though it were an inner concept of the mind. The subject is very common in the poetry of al-Nazzam Ibrahim ibn Saiyar and of other scholastics; I myself have treated the topic in the verses which follow.

No other cause of victory
There is, when we defeat the foe,
No other reason that we flee
Before their onset, as I know,
But that the souls of all mankind
In urgently unanimity,
O pearl in human hearts enshrined!
Strive to possess themselves of thee.
And so, where'er thou dost precede,
None following lags far behind,
But with thy mounting light to lead
All see the way, and triumph find.
But when to rearward thou dost stand
The warriors emulate thy deed,
And, answering their hearts' command,
Wheel round to join thee with all speed.

I have another poem on the same subject.

Say, art thou of the angels' sphere,
Or sharest thou our human kind?
My dazzled judgement sees not clear;
Bewilderment defeats my mind.
The vision of my outward eye
A human shape descries in thee;
When inward reason I apply,
I know thy form is heavenly.
Then blessed be God, Who did design
His creatures so symmetrical,
And fashioned thee a light to shine
In natural beauty over all.
Thou the primeval Spirit art,
As I undoubtingly believe,
Which an affinity of heart
Made our souls worthy to receive.
No other proof do we possess
To argue thy mortality,
But that thy visual loveliness
Impinges on our eyes, to see.
Did we not view thy essence clear
Within this world of space and time,
We would declare in faith sincere
Thou art pure Reason, true, sublime!

One of my friends has called another poem of mine, from which the next extract comes, “The Imaginative Perception”.

All opposites, as thou dost see,
          In him subsist combined;
Then how shall such variety
          Of Meanings be defined?
O wondrous body, that dost lie
          Beyond dimensions' range!
O accident, that shalt not die,
          Exempt from chance and change!
Thou cuttest through the tangled thread
          Of scholars' argument,
And makest, in thy light thus shed,
          The truth self-evident.

Precisely the same thing is to be found in the case of Hatred: you will see two persons hating one another for no basic cause or reason whatsoever, but simply because the one has a wholly irrational antipathy for the other.

Love—may God exalt you!—is in truth a baffling ailment, and its remedy is in strict accord with the degree to which it is treated; it is a delightful malady, a most desirable sickness. Whoever is free of it likes not to be immune, and whoever is struck down by it yearns not to recover. Love represents as glamorous that which a man formerly disdained, and renders easy for him that which he hitherto found hard; so that it even transforms established temperaments and inborn dispositions, as shall be set forth briefly in its own appropriate chapter, God willing.

Among my acquaintances I once knew a youth who was bogged down in love and stuck fast in its toils; passion had grievously affected him, sickness had worn him out. Yet his soul found no comfort in praying to Almighty God to remove his afflictions; his tongue was not loosed in any petition for deliverance. His only prayer was to be united with and to be possessed of the one he loved, despite the enormity of his sufferings and the long protraction of his cares. (What is one to think of the sick man who desires not to be rid of his sickness?). One day I was seated with him, and felt so distressed at the visible evidence of his miserable condition, his head cast down, his staring eyes, that I said to him (among other things), “May Allah grant you relief!” I at once observed in his face the marks of strong displeasure with what I had said.—It was with such a situation in mind that I composed the following verses, part of a long poem.

O rare delight, these pains that break
My heart, dear hope, for thy sweet sake!
Through all the days, in all my woe,
I will not ever let thee go.
If any man should dare to say,
“Thou shalt forget his love one day”,
The only answer I will give
Is an eternal negative.

What I have described is all the exact opposite of what Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Qasim ibn Muhammad al-Qurashi once told me in reference to his own case. (He is the man better known as al-Shabanisi, a descendant of Imam Hisham ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu‘awiya.) He declared that he had never loved anyone, never grieved to be separated from any friend, and never in all his life transgressed the limits of association and comradeship to penetrate the bounds of love and passionate affection.