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IBN
HAZM - MEDIEVAL ARAB
SCHOLAR – CODIFIER OF THE ART OF LOVE
by
Habeeb Salloum
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Described by historians as one of the most distinguished
and literary personalities in Arab Spain, Ibn Hazm, whose name is
sometimes found in its Europeanized form, Abenhazam, was a
creative scholar who is as much alive today as when he walked the
streets of Cordova in the 11th century.
Salma Jayyusi in The Legacy of Muslim Spain
describes him as a genuine humanist, a man of powerful
intellectual power, dynamic creativity and great moral integrity.
A genius in his age, there is little doubt that he deserves
these attributes.
Abu Muhammad Ali ibn Ahmad ibn Sa id ibn Hazm, better known
simply as Ibn Hazm, was a medieval Arab-Spanish scholar par
excellence. Noted as a jurist, theologian, genealogist and a man
of letters, he was born in Cordova in 994 and died in Niebla, in
1064 A.D. This
genuine medieval intellectual became noted, above all for his 30
chapter work, The Necklace of the Dove - considered
to be the most beautiful love-book in Arab Literature.
Born into a princely family of Cordova of Christian origin
which had converted to Islam, he became a part of high Cordovan
society. His
father’s prominent position within the court of the Amirid
rulers al-Mansur and his son al-Muzaffar, allowed him to receive
an excellent education.
Ibn Hazm acquired his learning at the hands of the most
famous teachers in Cordova and excelled
in all the disciplines of the day, such as the hadith, history,
literature, medicine, philosophy and poetry.
Due to his studies and brilliance, he became a renowned
theologian; a critical historian of the religious, philosophical
and theological schools; and a foremost leader in the Islamic
sciences.
When the Umayyad Caliphate, with which his family was
associated had been overthrown and followed by Berber rebels
sacking Cordova in the 11th century, lbn Hazm was
expelled from the city and his possessions were confiscated. He left for Almeria where he took part in a number of
rebellions that attempted to return the Umayyads to power. With the quelling of the
insurgencies, Ibn Hazm, discouraged by the events, took refuge in
the town of Jلtiva where
he settled and devoted his time to scholarly study.
Here, he found
sufficient peace and security to write his celebrated book of
love, Tawq al Hamamah, (The Necklace of
the Dove) which, in later centuries was translated into
more than half a dozen languages.
A treatise on the anatomy, psychology and manifestation of
love in joy and sorrow, it covers the essence and nature of love
and is a reflection of platonic passion - a delightful insight
into the intimate culture of Muslim Spain.
According to Mounah Khouri in
The Genius of Arab Civilization, this work on
chivalric love contains a number of similarities with Andreas
Capellanus’s later work, The Art of Courty Love -
universally acknowledged to be one of the celebrated classics in
medieval literature.
Ibn Hazm for many years remained faithful to the cause of
the Umayyads viewing it as the only legitimate dynasty in Arab
Spain. When the Umayyad Abd al Rahman V, regained the throne in
1023, Ibn Hazm became his vizier. Ruling for only two months, Abd
al Rahman was assassinated and lbn Hazm again was forced to leave
Cordova. When he realized the restoration of the Umayyads had
become an impossibility, he left all political activity behind and
devoted his time to the sciences.
He had an encyclopedic mind and became an extraordinary
historian, writing a great number of books, some three dozen still
extant, covering a wide range of subjects.
He became a leading scholar in numerous fields, ranging
from literature and religion to a good many of the sciences.
His book on religious sects has been hailed as the first
work ever on comparative religion.
Yet, even though Ibn Hazm has became famous in many
medieval scholastic fields and is more famous as a philosopher of
religion than a statesman or a man of letters, his Necklace
of the Dove has inscribed his name in history.
In his section about literature in The Legacy of
Islam, H.A.R. Gibbs writes:
“The
name of Ibn Hazm is proverbial in Islam for religious puritanism
and biting controversy, and honoured in the West as that of the
founder of the science of comparative religion.
Yet this man wrote and illustrated with his own verse a
treatise on love which rivals and perhaps surpasses the Book of
Venus. He accepts the
Platonic theory of love as the means whereby the
severed portions
of one sublime essence attain to earthly union, and in this spirit
of purest romanticism unfolds an anatomy of love which is in many
respects that of the troubadours of the next century, but to whose
glowing altitudes they seldom attained.”
Poetic and partly autobiographical, The Necklace of
the Dove delves into the forms of the profane and divine
love in the Muslim world of the time.
Written in an elegant prose, combined with verse, this
famous work considerably influenced the literatures of medieval
Europe. It covers the possible causes, symptoms, accompanying
phenomena, stages and outcomes of love, and appeals even to modern
readers in that it encompasses the infinity of passion.
Ibn Hazm ornaments his lines with colourful anecdotes about
himself and his peers, making his writings a documentation of
history and historical events. Also, the lively and natural
themes, enhanced by Arabic prose, makes his work a medieval, yet,
almost modern book about platonic love.
Up until he was fourteen years old, Ibn Hazm lived in a
harem and, hence, became very well acquainted with the ways of
women, subsequently enhancing greatly his knowledge about love.
The considerable number of women with whom he became
acquainted in his youth provided him with a large repertoire of
valuable insight and anecdotal material for his work. Ornamenting
the subjects in his work, he uses poetry and case studies of
lovers and love affairs, vividly narrated, some relating to
himself, when he discusses temptation and sexual transgressions.
He
narrates a story of how as a boy reaching adolescent he fell in love
with a jariyah (slave girl) named Nuam who belonged to a
noble lady. He explains
that even though he formed an ideal picture of her, after he reached
manhood, it all came to naught.
Yet, she left a deep imprint on his memory.
In this masterpiece of love literature, Ibn Hazm, in one of
his themes, even though asserting that the eyes play a large part in
arousing strong feelings in lovers, is skeptical of love at first
sight, stating that the staying power of this type of romance is
minimal. He maintained
that the eye is a an open portal for the soul - the roadway to
unveil its secrets and delve into its innermost thoughts and
intimate secrets. In another section he maintains that when jealousy dies out,
love fades away and, in another, he states that love is an incurable
disease, yet, a delightful condition for which one yearns.
In his Necklace of the Dove, he describes
heavenly and earthly love as no one had before him.
This is illustrated vividly by the words of Miguel Cruz Hernلndez,
in The Legacy of Muslim Spain, who quoting from this
love-book, writes:
“...love
is excited by ‘some accidents of bodily attraction and visual
approval which do not extend more than to physical appearance’.
But in this attraction there appear a number of graduations:
sweetness, harmony, beauty and grace, with beauty defined as a ‘thin
gauze which adorns the face with a certain splendour and fleeting
glow towards which hearts are attracted’.
Personal concrete love begins with sympathy, proceeds through
fancy, produce love, reaches adulation or passion and culminates in
amorous obsession, ‘which neither sleep, nor food, nor drink can
conciliate, except very little, and one can even grow sick or fall
into swoons and ecstatic states, speaking to oneself like a madman,
or reaching the extreme of dying of love.”
Hernلndez’s words
truly recap Ibn Hazm’s work on love and its attributes - a
treatise unequaled in the medieval literature relatingto love.
Habeeb Salloum
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