SOURCE: Giffen, Lois A. “Ibn Hazm and the Tawq al-hamāma.” In The Legacy of Muslim Spain, edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, pp. 420-42. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1992.

[In the following essay, Giffen analyzes The Ring of the Dove, considering this treatise on love to be Ibn Hazm's literary masterpiece and examining its origins, structure, content, themes, reception, and depiction of women and Arab society.]

INTRODUCTION

About three centuries after the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, and shortly before or after the thirtieth year of his very eventful life, ‘Alī b. Aḥmad b. Sa‘īd b. Hazm (384/994-456/1064) settled down to a quiet existence as a scholar in Játiva, a town not his own. Ibn Hazm had been born in Córdoba, his father Aḥmad having served at the court of the ‘Āmirid ḥājibs al-Manṣūr b. Abī ‘Āmir, his son ‘Abd al-Malik al-Muzaffar, and his younger son ‘Abd al-Raḥmān, nicknamed Sanchuelo, or Sanchol,¹ supposed regents for the Umayyad caliph. When Ibn Hazm was about fifteen, the ‘Āmirid regime collapsed and a period of great disorder referred to by Arab historians as the fitna began. Aḥmad was placed under house arrest, where he died when Ibn Hazm was nineteen. The next fifteen years must have tested him to the extreme. An Umayyad loyalist, he was caught up in the violent struggles between the Umayyad and Hammudid aspirants to power. Before he was thirty, Ibn Hazm was twice vizier to Umayyad pretenders in Valencia and Córdoba, had seen battle, and had been imprisoned at least three times as a consequence of his loyalty to the dynasty.

I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING THE TAWQ

It was either following his second imprisonment in about 412/1022 or after his third imprisonment in 418/1027 that he wrote the Tawq.² At both times he is found at Játiva seeking safety in retreat from politics and peace of mind in scholarly study. The latter date, at least, marks his complete severance from the political career which had brought him so much danger and grief. The major focus of his life for the remaining four decades was to be history, law, philosophy, and theology.³ Yet, in this time when he sought to recover from many personal losses, he found it worthwhile to write a book on love and lovers, the Tawq al-ḥamāma, or “The Dove's Neck Ring”.⁴

He wrote the book at the request of a close friend, if we are to credit the circumstantial references in his preface. Ibn Hazm speaks of receiving his friend's letter sent from Almería bearing the news of his safety, after which the friend made a long and dangerous journey to Játiva to see Ibn Hazm face-to-face. These details lend credence to the understanding that this was an actual request, not the formal literary convention often seen. The friend may well have been Ibn Suhayd (382/992-426/1035), poet and aristocrat, brought up, like Ibn Hazm, at the Umayyad court and a close friend since childhood.

Such a request from a highly placed friend was not the sole justification for writing. Ibn Hazm regarded himself as particularly qualified to write the Tawq, having spent his youth until about the age of fourteen in the harem, and having been instructed by women in those years in Quran, poetry, and composition.⁵ Highly intelligent, observant, and sensitive, he acquired many insights into feminine psychology upon which he drew in writing the Tawq. Nevertheless, lest someone might accuse him of being interested too much in hazl (pleasantries) at the expense of the jidd (serious things, i. e., religious scholarship), Ibn Hazm, like some other serious Muslim scholars writing on love, also justified this project by recalling the Prophet Muḥammad's reported saying: “Rest (or recreate) your souls from time to time; they are apt to rust, in the same way that steel rusts”, and two similar dicta of respected authorities.⁶

He returns again to this issue at the close of the Tawq al-ḥamāma, revealing that the threat of criticism is not imaginary or merely possible. “I am aware that certain of my fanatical enemies will be shocked by my having composed a book of this kind. They will say, ‘He has acted contrary to his professions, and deviated from his chosen path.’” He warns them against imputing impure motives to him, invoking both a Quranic verse (XLIX, 12) and a tradition of the Prophet warning against the sin of suspicion. He reminds them that, on the contrary, both a tradition and a maxim of the Companion ‘Umar b. al-Kattāb advise that a Muslim should always put the best possible interpretation on the actions of a fellow-believer.⁷

Ibn Hazm wrote only one other belletristic work, the Risāla fī faḍl al-Andalus (A Treatise on the Merit of al-Andalus), preserved only in al-Maqqarī's historical analects, the Nafḥ al-ṭīb.⁸ The Tawq al-ḥamāma also was nearly lost, although in the medieval period it was known to Arab Muslim scholars in both the Islamic East and West. It survived in a single manuscript⁹ copied by a rather careless scribe in 738/1338 and said to be only an epitome of the original. Yet, even as it stands, it is a masterpiece, a delightful window on the culture of Muslim Spain, an entrée into its intimate life. The fact that it was re-edited more than once since D. K. Petrof published the first edition of the Arabic text in 1914, and has been translated twice into English, as well as into German, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian is a testimony to the extraordinary interest the work has aroused.¹⁰

II. THE APPEAL OF THE TAWQ

The Tawq's appeal to modern readers lies first in the timelessness of its subject, love. However, it must be said that most medieval Arabic works on love would be less appealing to modern readers than Ibn Hazm's book. The special attractiveness of the Tawq is due to the fact that it is an exception to the tradition. He quite deliberately and in defiance of the practice of the time chose to illustrate his analyses of love's phenomena mainly with colourful anecdotes about himself and his fellow Andalusis, names and circumstantial details provided where possible. It was this difference which made the book a historical and social document. His narratives are lively and natural, and he uses the traditional ornaments of Arabic prose with a relatively light touch.

III. ITS RELATIONSHIP TO A TRADITION

Both Ibn Hazm and his friend Ibn Suhayd are said to have prided themselves on breaking away from the slavish imitation of Syrian and Iraqi models, aspiring to literary expression that was more of their time and place, more direct and more Andalusī.¹¹ The three Arab authors before him essaying comprehensive, book-length treatments of love were Easterners and relied heavily on the quotation of the best poetry, opinions, traditions, and anecdotes from many sources. They were Muḥammad b. Dāwūd al-Zāhirī (255/868-297/910) with his Kitāb al-zahra, “The Book of the Flower”, al-Wassā’ (ca. 246/860-325/936), author of the Kitāb al-muwassā, “The Brocaded”, or “The Embroidered in Many Colours”, and al-Karā’iṭī (d. 237/938), with his I‘tilāl al-qulūb, “The Malady of Hearts”.¹² Ibn Dāwūd assembled an anthology of verses on love, together with definitions and sayings on love arranged in chapters headed by aphorisms on the phenomena of love that provided the organising theme for each. Al-Wassā’ also reproduced poetry, sayings, anecdotes, and narratives from many traditional sources to supplement his comments on: 1) the subject of love; and 2) how to behave as a refined person, a zarīf. Al-Karā’iṭī concentrated on the collection of traditions, anecdotes, and and some verse and focused on passion as malady. These are not the only previous writers on love in Arabic, but they come nearest to undertaking the task that Ibn Hazm assumed. Exactly how much Ibn Hazm knew of these predecessors is not certain. Ibn Hazm refers once to an opinion expressed by Ibn Dāwūd (on which, a further word in a moment). Textual parallels in Ibn Hazm to al-Wassā’ have been suggested¹³ though it must be said that some of these parallels are tenuous and the closest are of such a nature that they would seem to belong to categories of wisdom about love that were in general circulation. The same concepts or sayings recur in other works on love without any clue that their authors had seen or owned a copy of the Muwassā. Whatever his mediating source, Ibn Hazm has used some of this fund of material on the nature of love. He has clearly drawn on the accumulated wisdom, sacred and secular, of Muslim scholarship and its heritage from antiquity, but he presents only what he himself with his critical mind believes to be correct or wishes to expose as false, and it is his poetry and largely his own anecdotes which illustrate his points. Had he followed the practice of earlier authors on love and other udabā’, he would not have neglected to quote the famous poets and re-hash the lore of famous lovers. Certainly he could not have ignored the great poet-lovers of the Banū ‘Udhra and their ilk. Yet this, in fact, is what he did, as he wrote to the friend to whom the Tawq was addressed:

I have kept in this book to the bounds set by you, limiting myself to things I have either seen with my own eyes, or I am convinced are true as deriving from a trustworthy reporter. Spare me those tales of Bedouins, and of lovers long ago! Their ways were not our ways, and the stories told of them are too numerous in any case. It is not my habit to wear out anybody's riding beast but my own; I am not one of those who deck themselves in borrowed plumes.¹⁴

After this refreshing departure by Ibn Hazm, writers of books on the theory of profane love resumed undisturbed the tradition of “wearing out other peoples' camels” and “dressing in borrowed adornments”; in other words, they kept to the habits of medieval Muslim scholarship, with its respect for the geniuses and authorities of the past and its enthusiasm for collecting their verses and akbār. The best authors of books on love sought to make their individual mark through personal interpretation, opinion or argument on debated issues, but also by the presentation of a greater quantity and quality of collected materials of this sort. Some authors are essentially compilers.

Among the twenty-odd authors known to us who wrote treatises or books on profane love between the 3rd/9th and 11th/17th centuries, there were two general tendencies. One group was animated by literary, humanistic, even scientific interests, though its members wrote as pious Muslims. These writers on love celebrated the classic literary treasury of transmitted wisdom, poetry, tales, and anecdotes of love. The second group, exemplified most prominently by Ibn al-Jawzī and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, was guided by a concern for the religious and moral questions entailed in love relationships.¹⁵ Ibn Hazm is an exceptional author in this respect also. His book could be said to encompass aspects of the two tendencies. Down to his two closing chapters on continence or chastity and the vileness of sinning, the Tawq is a literary work. Comments about ethical or moral aspects of each subject are integral to his own theory of love, in which nobility of character is essential. In the final two chapters he concentrates wholly on the moral struggle, though poetry and anecdote are still among his effective tools.

The ethos of the whole is modulated by the Islamic moral code, but among the sources of ideas on love the ‘Udhrī ideal of chaste profane love plays some role. Ibn Hazm says he will not repeat the stories of bedouins—a reference of course to the tales of chaste, unfulfilled love like those of Jamīl and Buthayna or Majnūn and Laylā because their ways are alien to himself and his contemporaries. Yet their ideal of chaste love and faithfulness to death does live on in his work: Fidelity or loyalty was the linchpin of his love ethics and of his personal life, as was chastity. His chapter on “Death” is about love-death, the fate of many ‘Udhrī lovers, and the lives of his victims were not so different from that of the famous Majnūn Laylā and his cohorts.

In organising his subject, Ibn Hazm himself is not totally outside the tradition, in spite of his reliance on his own poetry and stories for illustration. The formal structure of the Tawq al-ḥamāma conforms to and reinforces a trend. It begins with a discussion of the definitions, essential nature, symptoms and causes of love, māhiyyat al-‘isq, followed by the aḥwāl, analyses of the stages of love, with its adventures and misadventures, with everything illustrated by little case studies (anecdotes and stories). This shape is more or less discernible in the works on love which were to follow for the next several hundred years.¹⁶

One scholar has vehemently contrasted Ibn Dāwūd's Kitāb al-zahra (“full of exquisite affectation and effeminate pedantry,”) with Ibn Hazm's Tawq (“natural and human, direct and warm”).¹⁷ The impressions that led to this unfavourable assessment of Ibn Dāwūd are perhaps partly a function of the differing nature of the two literary efforts, though these are inevitably shaped by the personalities of the authors. The Zahra is largely a verse anthology that slips in a few of the author's own efforts, modestly hidden under indications such as “a contemporary” (ba‘ḍ ahl hādhā al-‘aṣr), while the Tawq is a treatise with the author's verses proudly taking a solo role everywhere, though not the starring one (his prose takes that), serving to elaborate the argument. In their psychological cores however, in attitudes and in facets of love explored, there are many similarities between the two works.

They are particularly connected by a “courtly spirit” that they share. Chapter themes in the Zahra, as in the Tawq, touch therefore on aspects of love as unfulfilled longing and related thoughts on humility and fidelity to the beloved, forgiveness, patience, keeping the secret, and chaste conduct in lovers. The feature which makes the Zahra seem a book full of delicate sadness is that it centres on this unfulfilled longing under its various aspects, drawing upon all the themes and nuances of the lover's experience to be found in the Arab poetic tradition up to Ibn Dāwūd's time. Ibn Hazm's brighter spirit and his finding of these themes in the flesh-and-blood reality of his own life and that around him, described in lively prose, gives the Tawq al-ḥamāma a wholly different atmosphere. Yet the “courtly spirit” rules, and it is no accident surely that the only poetry other than the author's own finding its way into the book is five lines from al-‘Abbās b. al-Aḥnaf (d. 190/806), the Abbasid poet noted for this same spirit. They slip into the book as the lyrics for a song which was sung to the lute one memorable afternoon at the family mansion at Rabaḍ al-Zāhira by a lovely but elusive slave girl who had for two years totally captured the heart of the adolescent Ibn Hazm.¹⁸

In the courtly style of love, unfulfilled longing may overwhelm the lover and passion (‘isq or hawā) becomes a serious and finally fatal malady. Love-death is the phenomenon most chilling and baffling to contemplate, but one which fascinated to one degree or another most writers on the theory of love. Of those who came after Ibn Hazm, Ja‘far b. Aḥmad al-Sarrāj (d. 500/1106) gathered a mass of material on it, and Mugulṭāi (d. 762/1361) dealt exclusively with the subject.¹⁹ The Zahra touches upon love-death briefly at the beginning of chapter eight, following the title “A Refined Person Will Be Chaste”. The author quotes—with an isnād—the alleged ḥadīt from the Prophet declaring that those who love passionately but chastely (some versions add: “and keep the secret”) and die, die as martyrs (some versions add: “and are brought into Paradise”). As if to validate his book with a seal of reality, Ibn Dāwūd himself is alleged to have died of love at thirty-two years of age, destroyed by chaste and unrequited affection for a Baghdadi pharmacist. According to the kabar on this event, he quoted the same ḥadīt on his deathbed.²⁰ Ibn Hazm quotes the same saying at the opening of his chapter on “Death”, without an isnād, and even without attribution to any person, calling it “one of the ātār”, a term which can mean a tradition of the Prophet or one of the Companions. He does not, for whatever reason, refer to the kabar about the circumstances surrounding the death of his Zāhirī predecessor.

He does makes a point of mentioning the author of the Zahra once though he misrepresents him to some degree:

Men have held various views about the nature of love and have discussed it at great length. I hold that it is a joining of the parts of souls that were divided in these created beings, a reunion in their original sublime element, not as Muḥammad b. Dāwūd has said—God have mercy on him—referring to some philosophers, that spirits are segmented spheres, but rather according to an affinity of their powers in their abode in the sublime world and closeness in the way in which they are constituted.²¹

Whatever the precise interpretation that one puts on the Arabic text,²² it is evident that Ibn Hazm wants to score a scholarly point against the most famous of his predecessors, the only writer on love theory he chooses to mention. Ibn Dāwūd, in fact, only reported this theory with others saying: “One of the philosophers [or: those who claim to be philosophers, al-mutafalsifin] alleges …”, referring to the idea that the souls of those who fall in love are two halves of one sphere which was divided by the Creator before being joined to their bodies, an apparent reflection of the speech of Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium.²³

There are many other points at which Ibn Hazm reflects the existing body of opinion or controversy on love addressed by other Arab Muslim writers on the subject, as well, over the centuries. While it is not possible here to link all of Ibn Hazm's themes with similar or contrasting discussion in even the most important of the twenty-odd related works written by authors spanning at least nine centuries, with a few more examples one may convey a brief impression of the manner in which the Tawq was part of an on-going tradition in the issues discussed as well as its general plan, as already indicated. Another topic for controversy, for example, was the question of whether, indeed, familiarity breeds contempt, as the axiom goes in English. “Some say that union too long enjoyed is fatal to love. That is a vile doctrine, advanced only by those who quickly tire of a sweet romance. On the contrary the longer the union lasts the firmer the attachment becomes”.²⁴ His theory on this also applies to a related question: can love, or passion, exist in marriage or survive into marriage? His anecdotes in the chapter on “Union” include not only secret meetings of lovers, but lovers joined in a lawful relationship. No state on earth has the potential for greater bliss, according to Ibn Hazm, than such a union, if their love endures, reciprocated equally, and if God permits them to enjoy many years together at peace with each other and untroubled by the world.

In this vein, Ibn Hazm later tells an anecdote about Ziyād b. Abī Sufyān, Governor of Basra under the Umayyad Mu‘āwiya I, who was said to have put the question to his courtiers: “What man enjoys the most blessed life?” They guessed it was the Caliph, but he reminded them of his troubles with the Qurays. Then they ventured that it must be himself, but he reminded them of his own troubles with the zKārijis and the frontiers. “So, who is it, Prince?” they asked. “A Muslim man who has a Muslim wife, the two of them have enough to live on, and she is pleased with him and he is pleased with her; we do not know him and he does not know us!”²⁵

The prime role that the eyes play in falling in love was naturally a major subject for analysis throughout the history of the writing on love. Ibn Hazm's forerunner, Ibn Dāwūd, devoted the first chapter in the Kitāb al-Zahra to this theme, entitling it “He Whose Glances are Many, His Sorrows are Prolonged”. There he gathered verse on this theme by a number of poets, short anecdotes, fragments of other wisdom and psychology, including explanations of the cause of passion attributed to Plato, Galen, and Ptolemy.

One century and three centuries after Ibn Hazm respectively, the two major Hanbalite writers on theory of love, Ibn al-Jawzī and Ibn Qayyim, made strict control over the eyes the keystone of their strategy to avoid falling in love, and into sin, documenting their arguments and analysis with traditions from the Prophet and from Companions, and appealing to the testimony of well-known poets and famous anecdotes on the cause and effects of passion. Ten chapters in Ibn al-Jawzī's Dhamm al-hawā and four chapters in Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya's Rawḍat al-muḥibbīn are devoted especially to the role of the eyes, their lawful use, averting the gaze, and the consequences of looking where one should not.

Ibn Hazm dealt with the role of the eyes in his own way. Though not less impressed than those later writers with the potential for sin, or personal suffering that might ensue from the awakening of passion, his general approach is to portray both the beauty of amorous attraction and the necessity for avoiding sin. He treats the subject of love at first sight, but he is sceptical about the depth or staying qualities of such love. In his stories we frequently see the eyes play a part in arousing strong feelings but he does not engage in academic speculation on the mechanism for this. He also writes in detail on the use of the eyes to send coded signals to the beloved. However, in his penultimate chapter he does directly address the eye's problematic aspect for the faithful. This leads him to cite one Tradition and the Quranic text (XXIV, 30) on guarding the eyes,²⁶ but references to the need to control the eyes are integral to his discussion of tendencies and temptations to sin found in affaires d'amour, both heterosexual and homosexual.

Again, what makes Ibn Hazm different from the other authors on love theory is his use of very poignant stories, narrated vividly but with a certain economy of language, of cases of temptation to sexual transgressions (including some of his own narrow escapes). To a modern reader at least, the Tawq in this way makes a more profound impression on the mind and spirit than the more protracted and detailed studies of the doctrine of averting the eyes (gaḍḍ al-baṣar) found in the Hanbalite works, whose authors amass more traditions, anecdotes of times past, and scholarly argument.

Ibn Hazm, in fact, impressed Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya himself sufficiently so that he quoted him thrice to support a point, though he also criticised him four times, alleging that he wrongly allowed music and glances at strange women and that he erred in his theory that the unity or similarity of elements in the souls of those who fall in love had existed from before their earthly creation.²⁷

IV. THE POETRY IN THE TAWQ

To expand upon and refine the themes under discussion, he offers frequent quotations from his own poetry. The view has been advanced that in making his epitome or abridgment of the original work the copyist of the Tawq al-ḥamāma probably cut some of Ibn Hazm's poetry and that this was perhaps not a bad thing, since, it was opined, his poetry was not of the best.²⁸ It is true that, compared with some highly-regarded works of the classical Arabic poetry, Ibn Hazm's work may seem less richly ornamented and more prosaic, but “prosaic”, in the first, positive meaning of the term, i.e. “of or like prose”,²⁹ may hold the key to his intention: he strives often to express certain thoughts as clearly and connectedly as he might have done in prose.

In much of the Arabic poetry praised by medieval critics, the density of imagery and word-play and the focus on the perfection of the line more than the longer flow of thought work against clarity and continuity. Ibn Hazm seems to place the priority on the substance of his thought or feelings while choosing language as lyric or graceful as he can find, given the primacy of his first purpose and the restrictions of meter and rhyme. To feel this difference one need only set his work side by side with Hispano-Arab poets contemporary with him, like Ibn Suhayd and Ibn Zaydūn.³⁰ Real thought flows from his lines while the verses of the more highly praised Ibn Suhayd and Ibn Zaydūn seem in comparison to read like riddles, though clad in the approved splendour of layers of golden metaphor. His alfāz may not glint and dazzle like theirs, but his ma‘ānī glow steadily. It was this tendency in his poetry which enabled him so closely to match his prose discussion on theory of love with verses that drove home the point of the discussion.

Some of his verses are truly memorable. Even his less successful lines are often more attractive in thought and poetic realisation than many of the verses inserted in books of adab, biography, or religious studies in the medieval Arabic tradition, lines whose chief merit is often that they echo rather ponderously in meter a fragment of the preceding thought.

One does not often ask to what school of jurisprudence a poet belonged, in examining his approach to belles-lettres. This may be germane, however, in the case of Ibn Hazm, for there is good reason to think that at the time he wrote the Tawq he had either adopted the Zāhirī doctrines which determined the character of his life's work as a scholar or he was close to doing so. He had been brought up in the Mālikī school dominant in Spanish Islam, then had adopted Sāfi‘ī doctrine³¹ for a time before undergoing a thoroughgoing conversion to Zāhirism, a viewpoint which for him had the most sweeping relevance to all facets of his life and thought. The basic Zāhirī approach was to derive the law only from the literal text (zāhir) of the Quran and the Sunna, without any of the tools of interpretation or casuistry used by other schools. Ibn Hazm applied this attitude to all his endeavours. His experience as a youth in his late teens and twenties at the most rarefied levels of political power and intrigue made him a reluctant and sad sceptic concerning man's capacity for good and for truth. His response to the pervasive vice and corruption he met was the conviction that there is no refuge except in God, who is Truth. He struggled with the phenomena of language and truth, man's tendency when he speaks about himself or for himself to use language in an arbitrary way, distorting it to dissimulate and deceive. Ibn Hazm respected language as such, and believed that its rules were in principle intended to allow accurate communication. However, only true friendship could provide the conditions for truth and sincerity in communication.³²

It may be significant that these ideas appear in the Tawq. In the tradition of Arabic poetic criticism, it was often asserted that the best Arabic poetry was the most lying, a view that was uncongenial to Ibn Hazm, it would seem. An observation which he makes in his chapter on contentment (al-qunū‘) reveals the author's sensitivity to the issue of truth and sincerity in language:

Poets have a variation on the theme of contentment through which they desire to show off to their own advantage and show their mastery over deep thoughts and far-fetched ideas. Each has spoken according to the strength of his natural talent, but they use language in an arbitrary way, speak affectedly, and get carried away with their own rhetoric; and it is all untrue from the beginning.³³

However, he is not so serious here that he is humourless about the issue of truth, for he boasts that he had outdone all the poets who competed in sentimental hyperbole on the theme of consolation after separation from the beloved. With exaggerated imagery, they expressed their contentment with the fact that they and their beloved were under the same heavens and supported by the same earth, encompassed by the same day and the same night, and the like. Ibn Hazm credits himself with the ultimate in imaginative conceits when he says in verse that he will be content in his separation from the beloved because they are together in the mind of God and in Time.³⁴

V. THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE TAWQ

In his organisation of the Tawq, Ibn Hazm shows the same enthusiasm for rational order and completeness that he was later noted for in his works on law, theology, and heresiography. He arranged the Tawq in thirty chapters which proceed in a sequence both logical and symmetrical. The overall work can be generally described as covering the essence and nature of love, the possible causes, symptoms, and accompanying phenomena, stages and outcomes, illustrating the discussion at every point with brief case studies of lovers and love affairs. Much later in his life, as he wrote his book on ethics, he provided definitions of love and the names for progressive stages of love, though it appears that he did not yet employ these terms in the Tawq with a conscientious effort at differentiation.³⁵

After the author's preface, the chapter structure begins with (1) the “Preliminary Excursus”, in which he speaks of his plan for the book and theories about the nature of love, followed by (2) “The Signs of Love”. Five chapters on “Falling in Love” (3-7) analyse different modalities of the onset of love. The first is the most unusual and improbable: one may fall in love through first seeing the person in a dream. Somewhat more possible is falling in love through hearing someone described in conversation, and more plausible are falling in love at first sight, falling in love after long association, and falling in love with a particular quality, or characteristic, and never thereafter being able to love anyone who was not like that first love.

Having fallen in love, the lover must communicate this to the beloved. Three means of doing that are the subjects of the next chapters: (8) “Allusion through Words”; (9) “Signalling with the Eyes”; and (10) “Correspondence”. The sending of missives entails the next discussion, (11) “The Messenger”. They are now both aware of their feelings for each other, but should others know? Ibn Hazm debates the merits of secrecy versus public expression of one's sentiments in (12) “Concealing the Secret” and (13) “Revealing the Secret”.

As the affair develops, assuming the beloved one accepts the attentions of the lover, is it better if the beloved is always receptive to the wishes of the lover, or does love thrive better with some opposition, real or feigned, on the part of the beloved? The symmetry of chapters continues thus with (14) “Compliance” and (15) “Opposition”, from the beloved. Likewise, what happens to the affair when it finds resistance or help from others—the subjects of (16) “The Reproacher” and (17) “The Helpful Brother”?

His precise symmetry is just slightly spoiled by the necessity next to fill out this list of persons hovering in the background with two more types, not opposites as were the three pairs of topics just discussed, but similars: (18) “The Spy”; and (19) “The Slanderer”.

Will the lover finally achieve his desire and be united with the beloved, and what wisdom on the desirability of that do we find? (20) “Of Union” deals not with sexual union in particular; the burden of the meaning of wiṣāl in this chapter is on the comprehensive sense of the lovers' coming together and being together—their union, communion or reunion after an absence or in the face of obstacles to their meeting. Ibn Hazm makes clear in the last chapter that one should allow oneself sexual union only when it is lawful. The delightful incidents of union described in this chapter seem innocent of harm or actual law-breaking, with the doubtful exception of the incident where a friend of Ibn Hazm's laughingly recalls an occasion of delicious union unforgettable to him. When a cloudburst interrupted a family excursion in the countryside, due to a shortage of raincovers for the group he was ordered by an uncle to shelter under his raincover a slave girl from one of their houses whom he was quite mad about but to whom he had been denied access. Ibn Hazm's friend left him—and us—to guess exactly what went on there in their small cocoon of privacy during the rainshower.³⁶

The opposite of union is (21) “Breaking Off”, the first and most exquisite variety of which is the breaking off occasioned by the presence of a spy. The beloved draws away from the lover and continues speaking, addresses her words to another person, but she laces her words with subtle allusions intended for the beloved. The lover also draws away, though more dominated by his natural instincts; “he appears even while drawing away to be advancing, speaking though ostensibly silent, his eyes turned in one direction and his heart in another”.

Other causes of breaking off are progressively less delightful and more serious, usually initiated by the beloved. She or he may test the lover's patience by feigning to shun him, by reproaching him with a fault, or making a false accusation. Spies or slanderers may come into the picture. When these things occur early in a relationship, or are not of a serious nature, the reconciliation can bring greater ecstasy than love's first raptures. He sketches the progress of the lover's artful diplomacy, trying to soften the heart of the beloved with abject humility, apologies and excuses, while the beloved slowly relents.

Serious complaints, on the other hand, “are a most unhealthy symptom, presaging evil to follow … the forerunner of severance”. Ibn Hazm treats separately the case where the lover takes the initiative in breaking off because he has seen the beloved begin to treat him harshly, seeming to fancy another. In verse, Ibn Hazm likens him to the Muslim in mortal fear for his life who is permitted taqiyya, pretended apostasy, or hiding his beliefs. In the same way, the lover may pretend no longer to love, while he burns within.

The subject of “Fidelity” (22) arrives at the midpoint of the book and is a hinge-point in the logic of the structure of the Tawq and in its psychology and ethics. To carry the metaphor a little further, the virtue of fidelity is the linchpin of a love relationship if that is to endure. This virtue was a favourite with Ibn Hazm. He integrates his concern for it into the discussion often. However, love is beset by many hazards, and the last six chapters on the phenomena of love are all sad reminders of that. The opposite of fidelity is “Betrayal” (23), and even to true lovers “Separation” (24) almost inevitably comes at some time, whether through breaking off or other circumstances which take them away from each other. The lover who is barred from union must face the situation philosophically, the subject of the chapter on “Contentment” (25). Those who cannot may be victims of “Wasting Away” (26) from the effects of melancholy. Every love, however, is without exception cut off by death or by “Forgetting”(27), though forgetting by the lover or the beloved may be either perfidious or excusable. It is the ethics that surround the practice of fidelity that determine when forgetting is excusable or inexcusable. Ibn Hazm analyses eight types of situation, four causes arising from the lover and four from the beloved.

“Death” (28) seems a logical final stage in the life history of love. However, Ibn Hazm is not thinking here of death that may sever any love relationship. He had dealt with that in the chapter on “Separation”. This is death that may be brought on by extreme agitation and unfulfilled longing for the beloved, love-death. Though he hinted in his Preliminary Excursus that the ways of the bedouin lovers who were slain by love were alien to him and his contemporaries, he in fact tells of many such cases from among his own acquaintances, one of the saddest of which was the case of his younger brother Abū Bakr and his wife ‘Ātika, married to him when he was fourteen. They were very much in love but during their eight years together often flew into rages at one another. Her grief at the loss of his perfect affection caused her to waste away with passion for him. When he died in the plague at Córdoba at twenty-two, she lost any desire to live and died on the first anniversary of his death.

He does not end the book on this disturbing note. Two very much longer chapters follow. These closing chapters, “The Vileness of Sinning” (29) and the “Virtue of Continence”(30), take up about twenty per cent of the book, each about three and a half times the average length of other chapters, an indication of the weight he gives to his ethical, moral or religious concerns. These chapters cannot be considered an exculpatory exercise, a taking back with one hand of what he might have given with the other, washing the hands of an imagined taint acquired by dealing in the subject of love. They are not a disclaimer tacked on to improve its reception; they were from the beginning in the plan of his work as he sketched it in the Preliminary Excursus. There is indeed no need for a disclaimer; the moral tone and attitude of the whole is consistent.

VI. IBN HAZM'S ATTITUDE TOWARD WOMEN IN THE TAWQ

After boyhood, Ibn Hazm spent most of his time in male company as would be expected in medieval Muslim society and most others. Naturally, therefore, the larger number of his stories are collected from male informants and are about men who fell in love. However, in this great variety of accounts, women appear not only as the beloved, the pursued one, but often as equal participants or the heroine smitten with love. In the latter case, of course, as females they in some instances did not have the means to bring the affair to happy conclusion and suffered deeply from the malady of love. However, it should be said this was not, and is not, exclusively a fate of females.

He sketches the female subjects/heroines as three-dimensional, believable persons, treated equally with men in the degree of attention he pays to their lives and feelings. He devoted much attention to understanding the special characteristics, psychology and interests of women, and the many roles they played. He seems just in his praise for the positive characteristics of women as he saw them in his time, and their special gifts and abilities, yet he is frank, but not harsh, in his (rare) criticism of their tendencies to certain weaknesses or vices.

Ibn Hazm is unusual among medieval Muslim scholars in that he rejects the opinion commonly held among them that men are better able than women to restrain their passions. He believes that men and women are equally vulnerable to an illicit love, given sufficient time and opportunity and seductive influence. If there are no obstacles present, and the person of the opposite sex is attractive, persuasive, and persistent in offering his or her love, they must ultimately tumble into Satan's net. No man or woman, however apparently self-disciplined, is immune, because the Creator so constituted men and women. All any well-intentioned Muslim can do is to try sincerely to avoid such situations and seek Allah's protection at all times.

On the positive side, he thinks it not remote from all possibility, as he put it, that virtue, or righteousness can be found in both men and women. In defining virtue or righteousness (al-ṣalāḥ) in the case of each sex, though, a modern reader's first impression might be that he had a lower estimation of the moral fibre of women than that of men. “A righteous woman”, he says, “is one who when restrained restrains herself, and when occasions of temptation are cut off, controls herself. … The righteous man is one who does not associate with libertines, expose himself to sights which would arouse his passions, or raise his eyes to gaze at wonderfully proportioned figures”.³⁷ The difference in the two definitions, however, seems rather to reflect the difference in the life circumstances of the two sexes in his time, the relative seclusion of the woman and the necessarily public life of the man.

His definition of evil conduct in both genders reflects this too: The protected situation of a woman makes it more difficult for her to be wicked; she must set about it quite intentionally. The fāsida, the corrupt woman, is one who goes against those constraints and protections from temptations, using every sort of trick to elude them and achieve her aim. Sin is closer to hand for the male; he need only abandon himself to it. A morally depraved or sinful man, fāsiq (he uses a stronger word than that used to describe the woman), is one who associates with bad characters, lets his eye roam, staring at pretty faces, seeks out spectacles harmful to him, and likes “deadly privacies”, presumably being alone with a “strange woman”, one neither his spouse or handmaiden nor a close relative.³⁸

As individuals, his women characters of whatever social rank, and slave or free, all seem interesting to him and their stories worthy of telling. Though outnumbered as informants by his male acquaintances, the many females—perhaps an unusual number—that he knew well, or knew about, in his circle of domestic and social contacts provided him with a large store of valuable wisdom and narrative material, some of which he could have gathered nowhere else. A typical source might be indicated with the remark “a woman in whom I have confidence once told me that she had seen …”³⁹

VII. THE GENDER OF THE BELOVED

It is difficult in some passages to know whether he refers to a male or a female beloved due to the language used there, either inclusive or ambiguous. Complicating the choice of interpretation is the knowledge that some poets referred to the female beloved with a masculine pronoun. Translators have often taken ambiguous or masculine gender referents in Ibn Hazm for females and so rendered them in the European language. In doing so they may have been compelled to make an arbitrary choice where there was no clue in the context. The translator often simply guessed that the referent was a woman or young maiden, or he preferred to think that, or he sensed that most modern Western readers would prefer to think so. Readers who use translations of the Tawq should keep this in mind, and use the Arabic text with it if possible, to see what actually lies behind the choices of gender.

Ibn Hazm, in dealing with cases of love, makes no essential difference between instances of passionate attachment—man for man (or youth), boy for girl, man for woman (or maiden), or vice versa. (Homoerotic attachments between women are not a subject of discussion.) As long as a story reveals some aspect of the nature of love and the psychology of lovers, it is most valuable grist for his mill. Whether the behaviour of the lover or the lovers has his approval, sympathy, pity or condemnation is quite another thing.

His sympathy is apparent for a lover's agony of mind and spirit, as is his pity for the disgrace among friends that may ensue from his loss of self-control, good judgment and dignity. Among Ibn Hazm's anecdotes on these cases, most of them more or less contemporary, disgrace for this kind of abdication of rational behaviour, good taste, and perhaps Islamic moral codes, seems more often attached to incidents of homosexual passion, particularly the love of a man for a youth, than to male-female loves. With the relative segregation of the sexes in al-Andalus, where men and youths passed the larger part of their time together and away from the society of women, such events were not rare judging from the ubiquity of references to them in poetry, literature and legal and moral treatises. At the same time, since men spent their days in the rather public environment of the mosques and commercial quarters, such affairs were hard to hide from the eyes of one's colleagues. The psychology of disgrace and shame are associated with public exposure of immoderate feelings and irrational, if not scandalous, conduct.

The approved relationship of love between two men is that of “love in Allah” mentioned in a saying of the Prophet, to which Ibn Hazm makes reference in his final chapter (31) on continence or chastity. This kind of love is also dealt with at least briefly in other works on love theory as well as in handbooks for Sufis. Two men who love each other in God, and meet together and part from each other in that spirit, belong to one of the seven categories of persons whom God will shelter in His own shadow on the Day of Reckoning.⁴⁰ Intense friendships or chaste love affairs between mature men or peers provide the stuff of many of Ibn Hazm's anecdotes on phenomena of love, and among these he draws lessons—discreetly and gracefully—from several of his own intense or deep relationships. Where the relationship of the lovers goes beyond al-ḥubb fi 'l-Llāh to obsession with the beloved, and the chaste kiss and decent embrace are not enough, Ibn Hazm's condemnation is that of Islamic Law. The sexual connection of two males, even indecent kissing or embracing, had been subject at times to severe punishment under the Sarī‘a as interpreted by various authorities, extending even to death and even for the more passive partner. Conviction for fornication or adultery, of course, had historically been punished with anything from flogging and banishment to stoning, depending on the sex and the marital status of the guilty parties and differing opinion among jurisprudents. Ibn Hazm goes into bloody detail about historical decisions in these matters in a manner which leads one to suspect that sexual transgressions were not systematically or regularly prosecuted in 5th/11th century al-Andalus and that he is stressing the severity of Sarī‘a penalties which had been meted out in particular cases in the past as an indication of how grave an offence they are to God. And the reverse also: he explains why these acts are such an offence to God or harmful to society and therefore merit punishment. He himself would not condone more than ten lashes for sodomites, but is bound to acknowledge the ḥadd punishment of stoning for those convicted of fornication after honourable wedlock, because, as he says, all the Muslim community except a few Kārijis do so.⁴¹

VIII. “COURTLY” ELEMENTS IN THE TAWQ

Western scholars, among them both Arabists and Romanists, have over many years suggested that certain parts of the Arab and Islamic tradition on love may have influenced the rise of the troubadour lyric and the development of the literary and social phenomenon called courtly love, which first appeared in the late 11th century in Languedoc.⁴² They have looked for influences and parallels because of the sudden appearance in those contexts of concepts and themes of love that had no discernible precedent in that social and intellectual milieu and that ran counter to church teaching and previous social norms.

As early as the mid-16th century of our era, an Italian scholar, Giammaria Barbieri, began such speculation with his theory of Hispano-Arab influence on the genesis of the rhymed forms of the troubadour lyrics, an idea since discredited. At intervals since then scholars have examined several possible channels or points of influence of an intellectual, cultural or artistic nature, some broadly conceived and inclusive and some focused more narrowly.⁴³ The themes and concepts of love in Arabic poetry and the body of ideas found in treatises on love were two of those potential sources. The treatises on the theory of love, of which the Tawq is in many ways the most important, often represent an alliance of these two sources, since they frequently quote verse. The genesis of Arabic theory of love was in fact heavily indebted to the fund of themes and ideas preserved in the poetic tradition.⁴⁴

Those who have proposed possible Arabic influence have pointed out that the cardinal features of courtly love have many striking parallels in Arabic literature. A number of these appear in Ibn Hazm's book. One can adopt the view that a love much like the courtly love of late medieval Europe is potentially a universal phenomenon, polygenetic⁴⁵—even though some aspects of it seemed to arise out of nowhere—and that it appeared independently in Provence, as it had in the Arab world; and perhaps other places, without any need of “influences”. However, in principle this still would not rule out a contributory role for Arab influences joined to local factors. There remains a large body of evidence strongly suggestive of Arab influence at a number of points, though some supposed connections have proven wrong, and not all scholars familiar with the evidence accept that anything much is proven.

In view of the long history of cultural contacts and sharing, including even marriage alliances in several instances between Christian and Muslim rulers, and patronage of Arab Muslim scholars, Arabised Jewish scholars and musicians by Christian rulers, it would seem quite incredible, in truth, if no ideas about love were discussed in these circumstances, when the influences in other areas of the arts, language, learning and material culture are well documented. However, the attitude of sceptics is embodied in the maxim of the medieval scholastics, De possibili ad esse nulla illatio (“One may not infer that something exists from the mere possibility of its existence”), quoted by a modern scholar during a discussion where he demanded historical proof that troubadours had seen or heard and understood actual texts of particular Arabic love poems or songs. On that occasion he also challenged a distinguished colleague, who spoke of a reservoir of ideas, signs, symbols and conventions inherited in common from Antiquity by the Latin West, Byzantium, and Islam, to trace in each case the development of a given element of this heritage and how specifically it was transmitted through the different parts of their related worlds. (To this his colleague objected that principles of methodology demanded that one investigate first the possibility of certain things which the two civilisations had inherited in common. If that hypothesis were rejected, only then should one pursue individual details or hunt analogies.)⁴⁶

Our sceptic, however, conceded an advantage in a comparison revealing the similarities and differences between the two societies and their “courtly” literatures as an exercise leading to a clearer understanding of both. In that spirit, at least, we can speak of some—this short list is not exhaustive—of the themes and ideas in the Tawq al-ḥamāma which were also seen in the poetry and lore of courtly love:

(1) Love had a remarkable power to reform the lover, to make him more generous, brave, noble, elegant and well-spoken, and amend faults of character or habit.⁴⁷

(2) True love brings an insatiable desire and an exquisite anguish.⁴⁸

(3) The concept of love as a malady leading to the loss of appetite, wasting, pallor, sleeplessness, melancholy, emotional extremes, obsession, and possibly madness—all leading even to death—is fundamental, as is evident from his chapters on wasting away and on death, as well as other passages.

(4) Secrecy is essential, and jealousy helps to fan the fires of love. Ibn Hazm spoke more clearly about the importance of jealousy and its nature in his Kitāb al-aklāq wa 'l-siyar (Book of Ethics, or Morals and Conduct).⁴⁹

(5) The role of the spy, the slanderer and the trusted confidant or messenger have their chapters in the Tawq, as well as their fabled place in the lore of courtly love.

(6) The lover was humble and submissive before his beloved; she was object of a kind of worship: “I have trodden the carpets of caliphs and witnesses the assemblies of kings and I never saw a timid respect that would equal that of a lover toward his beloved”.⁵⁰ This is irrespective of her social condition; she may be a slave-girl.

(7) Often in Arabic poetry the beloved, even though a woman, is referred to with words of the masculine gender, for decency's sake, and some poets addressed her as “my lord”, sayyidī, or “my master”, mawlāyā. The troubadours also adopted the habit of addressing the lady as midons, “my lord”, rather than madomna, “my lady”.

(8) One might love a lady of higher rank in Ibn Hazm's day. He gives an example of love at first sight; an exalted lady glimpses the son of clerk from her window and she initiates an intense correspondence. While dealing with the problem of slanderers, however, he alludes to the vast number of cases in which the handsome youth of lower rank is poisoned or otherwise undone by his powerful woman lover after a slanderer lyingly suggests to her that he is divided in his affections. In those circles in Europe which accepted the conventions of courtly love, a knight or troubadour often courted a lady of higher rank. (However, not all noble or royal husbands tolerated this kind of game, and a few courtly lovers paid dearly.)

In the Tawq there is an implied moral and aesthetic nobility conferred on the virtuous lover as well as on the person adored if she conducts herself well. Behind the lack of permanent barriers of birth and class lies the principle of the equality of all believers before Allah, however many exceptions might arise in practice, stemming from power, wealth or pride of blood and culture. There are, however, some parallels in the Arab tradition to troubadour-like devotion to noble ladies. The pre-Islamic poet might boast of the high status and protected existence of his love,⁵¹ and in Ibn Hazm's own time high-born women seem to have enjoyed a degree of social freedom and the attentions of poets.⁵²

IX. A FINAL IMPRESSION

If there is a single unstated conclusion that Ibn Hazm's readers could draw from his comprehensive discussion about the theory and phenomena of love and the great variety of his illustrative case histories about the delights and trials of passion, it is that the place of human loves in life is a very dynamic but ambivalent one, entwined in the very roots of existence, and bringing the potentiality for the ultimate in earthly bliss or deepest disappointment and grief. From childhood until great age, affairs of the heart, and the moral choices bound up in them, may at any time confront a man or woman. His personal anecdotes not only reveal himself and his society, but bring home to one a sense that we humans are always “walking on the edge”, so to speak, in emotional and moral terms, a consciousness the average person tends to suppress for his or her peace of mind—and the importance therefore for the Muslim of observing habits of devotion and the rules of social intercourse which were designed to channel the emotions and natural appetites in directions harmonious for oneself and one's neighbour.

No precautions are perfect, even in Muslim societies more rigorous than 5th/11th century al-Andalus in their seclusion of women. Ironically, it was a social situation considered quite proper in his circle that once put Ibn Hazm in danger of committing some transgression of the bounds. The young woman had been brought up with him and therefore was allowed to go unveiled in his presence during his stay with her older relative, a lady famed for her righteousness, charity, and prudence. Since they had last seen each other, the girl's inherited good looks had bloomed into a womanly beauty that dazzled Ibn Hazm. He devotes nearly a page to a lyric description of her as she appeared on the unforgettable evening that they met, confessing that she so ravished his heart and obsessed his mind that he never allowed himself to return to that house.⁵³ This passage, one of Ibn Hazm's finest, encapsulates both his unflinching honesty and the spiritual, psychological and artistic genius that marks the Tawq al-ḥamāma as a masterpiece.

Notes

1. A. R. Nykl (trans.), A Book Containing the Risāla Known as the Dove's Neck-Ring about Love and Lovers, Paris, 1931, pp. li-lii. For the explanation of the Muslim ruler's widely used nickname Sanchuelo/Sanchol see E. Lévi-Provençal, Histoire de l'Espagne musulmane, II, 293-94. In his his article “‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Abī ‘Āmir”, Encyclopaedia Of Islam, new ed., Leiden, 1960-, he says the Arabic was “Shandjwilo”. In the Histoire it is “Shandjul”.

2. Van Arendonk accepted 418/1027 as the approximate time of the composition of both the Tawq and his other belletristic work, the Risāla fī faḍl al-Andalus. Nykl (op. cit., lvii) puts the date of composition in 412-13/1022. García Gómez accepts Nykl's dating (see El Collar de la Paloma, Madrid, 1952, p. 25). At both dates he was apparently in Játiva.

3. For a comprehensive and careful summary discussion of Ibn Hazm's life and scholarship see Roger Arnaldez, article “Ibn Hazm”, Encyclopaedia of Islam (new ed.).

4. The practice of making metaphorical reference to jewellery—necklaces were a favourite item—in the titling of Arabic books of poetry or adab literature was cleverly joined by Ibn Hazm to a second image appropriate to love, the dove. In the erotic prelude of the Arabian qaṣīda, the evocation of the dove cooing sweetly to its mate or mournfully calling for its return suggests the lover-poet's own emotion. Ibn Hazm combined both the dove and the necklace images by alluding to a variety of sand-coloured dove found in the Near East and Mediterranean lands, the ring-necked dove, or ring-dove, which is marked with a narrow collar of brown feathers resembling a ṭawq, an ornamental ring for the neck.

5. Ibn Hazm al-Andalusî, Le Collier du Pigeon ou de l'Amour et des Amants, Arabic text with French translation, introduction, notes and index by Léon Bercher, Algiers, 1949, pp. 126-28; Ibn Hazm, The Ring of the Dove, A Treatise on the Art and Practice of Arab Love, trans. Arthur J. Arberry, London, 1953, p. 101.

6. Bercher's ed., pp. 4-6; Arberry's trans., p. 17.

7. Bercher's ed., p. 402. Arberry's trans., p. 281.

8. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Maqqarī, Analectes sur l'histoire et la littérature des Arabes d'Espagne, ed. R. Dozy, et al., Leiden, 1855-61, II, 109-21.

9. Leiden, Warneriana 461.

10. The defective text of the Tawq al-ḥamāma has been made usable and accessible through the efforts of three different editors of the text (D. K. Petrof, 1914; Léon Bercher, 1949; Hasan Kāmil al-Sairafi, 1950) and at least seven translators. Their work was supplemented by suggestions offered in print and privately from time to time by other scholars seeking to find the solutions to problems in the text. See the bibliography for the translators and important published articles suggesting amended readings of the manuscript.

11. Emilio García Gómez identifies Ibn Hazm and Ibn Suhayd as leaders of a new Andalusī school of literature with these characteristics. See his Poesía arábigoandaluza, Madrid, 1952, pp. 60-65 and the introduction to his Spanish translation of the Tawq, El Collar de la Paloma, pp. 6-9. Charles Pellat, however, thinks it an exaggeration to say that they led a tendency to a specifically Andalusī poetry, since in his view neither were really innovators. See “Ibn Suhaid”, Encyclopaedia of Islam (new ed.). However, Pellat speaks of their poetry. This cannot be said of Ibn Hazm as author on love theory or a religious scholar. Perhaps, as we shall see, Ibn Hazm is even somewhat of an innovator in poetry.

12. Abū 'l-Tayyib Isḥāq b. Yaḥyā al-Wassā’, Kitāb al-muwassā, ed. Karam al-Bustānī, Beirut, 1385/1965; Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Abī Sulaymān b. Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-Zahrah (The Book of the Flower,) The First Half, ed. A. R. Nykl in collaboration with Ibrāhīm Tūqān, Chicago, 1932. Lois Giffen is currently working on an edition, translation and study of the I‘tilāl al-qulūb of al-Karā’iṭī.

13. Emilio García Gómez, “Un precedente y una consecuencia del ‘Collar de la Paloma’”, Al-Andalus, 16, 1951, pp. 309-23.

14. Bercher's ed., p. 6; Arberry's trans., p. 18.

15. For analysis of the development of theory of love as a branch of literature see Lois A. Giffen, Theory of Profane Love among the Arabs: The Development of the Genre, New York, 1971, London, 1972. Joseph N. Bell, Later Hanbalite Theory of Love, Albany, 1979, studies in detail the development of religiously-conditioned thought on love in Ibn al-Jawzī, Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim, and Mar‘ī b. Yūsuf. A thorough study of the first of these men is Stefan Leder's Ibn al-Gauzī und seine Kompilation wider die Leidenschaft, Beirut, 1984.

16. See Giffen, Theory of Profane Love, pp. 53-96.

17. García Gómez, “Un precedente y una consecuencia”, p. 312.

18. Tawq, Bercher's ed., pp. 282-90; Arberry's trans., pp. 208-14.

19. Abū Muḥammad Ja‘far b. Aḥmad al-Sarrāj, Maṣāri‘ al-‘ussāq, ed. Karam al-Bustānī, Beirut, 1378/1958, 2 vols.; ‘Alī 'l-Dīn Abū ‘Abd Allāh Mugulṭāi, Al-Wāḍiḥ al-mubīn fī man ustushida min al- muḥibbīn, ed. O. Spies. Vol. 1 [Vol. 2 never published], Stuttgart, 1936.

20. Al-Sarrāj, Maṣāri‘ al-‘ussāq, 1:13-14; al-Kaṭīb al-Bagdādī, Ta‘rīk Bagdād, Cairo, 1349/1931, V, 262. Not everyone accepted that this was a sound tradition, though by the 6th/12th century it could be found with ten different chains of transmitters and slight variations in the text. The Hanbalite authors Ibn al-Jawzī (Dhamm al-hawā, The Condemnation of Passion, ed. Muṣṭafā ‘Abd al-Wāḥid, Cairo, 1381/1962, pp. 326-29 and Ibn Qayyim (Rawḍat al-muḥibbīn, The Garden of Lovers, ed. Aḥmad ‘Ubayd, Cairo, 1385/1956, pp. 180-82) argued that it was a forgery. See the chapter “Martyrs of Love”, in Giffen, Theory of Profane Love, pp. 99-115, and Table II, p. 149, diagramming the isnāds.

    Ignaz Goldziher in Die Zāhiriten, Hildesheim, 1967 (reprint of the edition of Leipzig, 1884), pp. 29-30, had noted both that Muḥammad b. Dāwūd's father, founder of the Zāhirī school of law, is associated with the spread of a tradition on martyrs of love and that he was not highly regarded as a traditionist. However, of the ten isnāds for this saying that Ibn al-Jawzī presents (see Giffen, Theory of Profane Love, Table II, p. 149), only one contains Dāwūd's name, so there were others, also, who had an interest in the spread of the idea that chaste victims of love-death were guaranteed a place in paradise.

21. Tawq, p. 14. My translation.

22. Arberry's translation gives the impression Ibn Dāwūd espoused this view:

    I do not share the view advanced by Muḥammad ibn Dāwūd—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.

    (Arberry's trans., p. 23.)

    Nykl's English rendition carries a similar implication: “Basing himself on (the views of) some philosophers …” (Nykl, p. 7). Ibn Hazm's words “Lā ‘alā mā ḥakāhu Muḥammad ibn Dāwūd … ‘an ba‘ḍ ahl al-falsafa anna 'l-arwāḥ ukar maqsūma. …” seem only to mean that the author of the Zahra passed on the information. The German and French translations of this passage take this direction. (Max Weisweiler, Halsband der Taube, über die Liebe und die Liebenden, Leiden, 1944, p. 19; Bercher, p. 15.) However translated, Ibn Hazm incorrectly conveys the impression that Ibn Dāwūd gave this as the theory to explain why a person falls in love with a particular individual.

23. Zahra, p. 15. Compare with the Symposium. The Greek and English texts are in W. M. Lamb (trans.), Plato: Lysis, Symposium, Gorgias, Loeb Classical Library, No.166, Cambridge (Mass.), reprinted 1961, pp. 133-45.

24. Arberry's trans., p. 223. Tawq, p. 158.

25. Tawq, p. 162. My paraphrase and translations of quotes. Cf. Arberry's trans., p. 125.

26. Tawq, pp. 322-25. Arberry's trans., p. 234.

27. Rawḍa, pp. 73-75, 86, 117, 130-31, 143, 173, 289-90. it is not clear why Ibn al-Qayyim thought that Ibn Hazm allowed looking at “strange” women, and this question has wide ramifications for the content of books on love theory. See Giffen, Theory of Profane Love, pp. 127-32.

28. Arberry's opinion (Arberry's trans., introduction, p. 13), a conclusion based apparently upon the copyist's colophon in the manuscript. Neither Arberry nor Weisweiler published the colophon in their translations. It says; “Here ends the treatise known as the Dove's Neck-ring by ‘Alī b. Aḥmad b. Sa‘īd b. Hazm, may God be pleased with him, after [lacuna] most of its poems and leaving the best of them, so as to improve it, and show off its good points, and reduce its bulk, and aid in finding out the strange (or uncommon) ideas in its expressions.” Nykl (p. 221 and note) supposes a missing word iktiṣār, “abridging”, at the lacuna. Bercher (p. 409, n. 164) suggests the same.

29. American Heritage Dictionary, 2nd college ed., 1985, s. v. “prosaic”.

30. Compare for example the selections from Ibn Suhayd, Ibn Hazm, and Ibn Zaydūn as they appear next to each other in James Monroe's Hispano-Arabic Poetry: A Student Anthology, Berkeley, 1974, pp. 160-76.

31. Sometime during the ‘Āmirid dictatorship Ibn Hazm converted to the Shāfi‘ī school—which does not pin it down precisely—and before 1027 he adopted the Zāhirī school, according to Miguel Asín Palacios, Abenházam de Córdoba y su “Historia crítica de las ideas religiosas”, Madrid, 1984 (reprint of the edition of Madrid, 1927), I, 130, 136.

32. On Ibn Hazm's convictions about language and truth, his application of Zāhirī principles, and how they determined his most fundamental views, see R. Arnaldez, article “Ibn Hazm”, Encyclopaedia of Islam (new ed.).

33. Tawq, p. 260. My translation. Cf. Arberry's trans., p. 194.

    This passage is cited by Arnaldez as an example of Ibn Hazm's abilities as a psychologist and moralist, though he translates the passage differently than I have here. I do not agree with his rendition of izhār garaḍahu as “externalising the passion which grips them”, suggesting rather “to show off (or to display) to their own advantage” as being the more likely sense and offering an Arabic parallelism in the sentence. Arnaldez himself says elsewhere in his article that Ibn Hazm uses the word izhār to mean an insincere display or expression. He understands ṭab‘ihi as “his nature”, which I make “his [or their] natural aptitude, or talent” for we are talking about poets, who are customarily said to display either talent (ṭab‘) or technical skill (ṣan‘a). See Arnaldez, “Ibn Hazm”, Encyclopaedia of Islam (new ed.).

34. Tawq, p. 260. Arberry's trans., p. 194.

35. Ibn Hazm, Kitāb al-aklāq wa 'l-siyar, ed. and trans. Nada Tomiche, Collection UNESCO d'oeuvres réprésentatives, Série arabe, Beirut, 1961, paragraphs 155-58. A number of other matters covered in this book relate to love as will be seen by surveying the translator's helpful index of subjects, pp. 145-63.

36. Bercher's ed., p. 168. The problem is the word “al-tamakkun” and its vagueness in Arabic. Arberry seems to infer the maximum: “enjoying full possession”, picking up on the notion of “mastery”, and “possession”, both inherent in the word (Arberry's trans., p. 129). Weisweiler (pp. 107-08) captures more of the ambiguity of the Arabic original in the semantic direction of “capability” or “possibility”—“welche Möglichkeiten sich mir … boten.” The French version also keeps some ambiguity: “la joie de cette possession”, factoring in the notion of joy from the context of the story (Bercher's ed., pp. 168-69).

37. My translation. Bercher's ed., p. 322. Cf. Arberry's trans., p. 233.

38. Ibid. Such a close relative would have to belong to one of the categories of relationship which would make her sacrosanct, because her degree of relationship would be an impediment to marriage, e.g. his mother and other ascendants, sister, daughter, and their descendants, his aunt, or the sister or aunt of his present wife or concubine, or “milk relatives” acquired by being fed by a wet-nurse. See G.-H. Bousquet, L'éthique sexuelle de l'Islam, Paris, 1966, pp. 79-80.

    A well-known canonical tradition of the Prophet, found in several forms, states that whenever a man is alone with a woman Satan is a third person present. See Ibn al-Jawzī, Dhamm, 147-51.

39. Tawq, p. 206. Arberry's trans., p. 155.

40. Tawq, p. 380. Arberry's trans., p. 267.

41. Tawq, pp. 358, 366. Arberry's trans., pp. 254, 258.

42. For a recent summary of the theories of Arabic or Hispano-Arabic influence, see Roger Boase, The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love, Manchester, 1977, pp. 62-75. The volume of scholarly publications on the troubadours and courtly love has with time become so massive and so divided over many points that even specialists may lose sight of the whole picture. Boase offers a helpful and detailed survey of four centuries of research and debate in Europe and America, comprising a chronological survey of the scholarship and a critical analysis of the various theories for the origin and meaning of courtly love and the troubadour lyric. He includes a selected bibliography of other bibliographies, scholarly studies, editions, and translations.

43. See Boase, op. cit., pp. 62-63. Briefly, the channels of possible influence proposed at one time or another have been: European assimilation of the scholarship and culture of the Islamic world, the institution and ideal of chivalry among the Arabs, Arab music and instruments, Arabic poetic forms, possible Arabic etymologies for the Provençal verb trobar, “to compose poetry” and the noun troubadour, poetic themes found in Hispano-Arabic love poetry, concepts of love in Arabic poetry, and finally works on the theory of love such as Ibn Dāwūd's or Ibn Hazm's, and the philosophical treatise of Ibn Sīnā entitled Risāla fi 'l-‘isq.

44. See Lois A. Giffen, “Love Poetry and Love Theory in Medieval Arabic Literature”, in Arabic Poetry: Theory and Development, ed. Gustave E. von Grünebaum, Wiesbaden, 1973, pp. 107-24. Ibn Hazm was just mentioned twice in this paper because he used his own poetry whereas the focus was on earlier poetic tradition as an important fount for Arabic love theory in the mainstream of that literature. Though the Tawq was a unique and atypical case within that stream, it might have been desirable to say a little more about it.

45. See Peter Dronke, Medieval Latin and the Rise of the European Love Lyric, Vol. 1, Oxford, 1965, p. ix.

46. See Samuel M. Stern, “Literary Connections between the Islamic World and Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages: Did They Exist?” in Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry: Studies by Samuel Miklos Stern, selected and edited by L. P. Harvey, Oxford, 1974, pp. 204-30. During a discussion following the delivery of this paper, Stern cited the axiom of the schoolmen (pp. 225-26) and it was Gustave von Grünebaum who advocated more attention to the common heritage of Antiquity as an explanation for certain features of courtly love in the Arab world and Europe (pp. 228-30).

47. Tawq, p. 32. Arberry's trans., pp. 34-35.

48. Tawq, pp. 28, 160, or Arberry's trans., pp. 31, 223, to cite but two examples.

49. Secrecy: Tawq, pp. 90-98; Arberry's trans., pp. 76 et seq. Jealousy, dealt with as stimulated by coquetry: Tawq, pp. 178-80; Arberry's trans., pp. 136-38, and more clearly in Ibn Hazm, Kitāb al-aklāq wa 'l-siyar, paragraphs 171-73.

50. Tawq, p. 182. Cf. Arberry's trans., p. 139.

51. The portrait of the lady in the erotic prelude (nasīb) of the pre-Islamic qaṣīda is examined for courtly attitudes by Jean-Claude Vadet in L'Esprit courtois en Orient dans les cinq premiers siècles de l'Hégire, Paris, 1968, pp. 43-48.

52. Henri Pérès, La Poésie andalouse en arabe classique au XIe siècle, Paris, 1937, pp. 397-431.

53. Tawq, p. 328. Arberry's trans., pp. 236-37.

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