by Ali Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi
Written in 1022 A.D./413 A.H., Ibn Hazm combines anecdotal experience & eloquent poetry in a scholarly pot – what can best be described as the Muslim man’s guide to the emotion that’s mystified humanity most: love in all its forms. The following is an excerpt of some of his chapters focusing on the possibility of falling in it, from romantic love to platonic friendships.
OF FALLING IN LOVE WHILE ASLEEP
Every love affair must necessarily have some original cause. I shall now begin with the most unlikely of all causes of love, so that this discourse may proceed in due order, starting as ever with the simplest and easiest example. Love indeed is sometimes caused by things so strange that if I had not observed them myself I would not have mentioned them in this treatise at all.
One day I visited our friend Abu ‘1-Sari ‘Ammar Ibn Ziyad, the freed-man of al-Mu’aiyad, and found him deep in thought and much preoccupied. I asked him what was amiss; for a while he refused to explain, but then he said, “An extraordinary thing happened to me, the like of which I have never heard or experienced before.”
“What is that?” I enquired.
“Last night,” he answered, “I saw in a dream a young maiden, and on waking I found that I was madly in love with her. Now I am in the most difficult straits with this passion.”
He continued to be cast down and afflicted for more than a month; nothing would cheer him up, so profound was his emotion. At last I scolded him, saying, “It is a terrible mistake to occupy your soul with something unreal, to attach your fantasy to a non-existent being. Do even you know who this maiden is?”
“No, by Allah!” he replied.
“You have poor judgment –– and your discretion must be affected, if you are actually in love with a person whom you have never seen, someone moreover who was never created and does not exist in this world at all. If you had fallen for one of those pictures they paint on the walls of the public baths, I would have found it easier to excuse you.” So I continued, until at last by making a great effort he forgot his trouble. Now my opinion is that his case is to be explained as a pure fantasy of the mind, a nightmare illusion, and falls into the category of wishful thinking and mental hallucination. I have expressed this situation in verse:
Ah, would I know who she might be, And how she walked by night! Was she the moon that shone on me, The sun’s uprising light?
A mere conjecture of the mind By contemplation wrought, An image that the soul designed, Revealed to me by thought?
A picture that my spirit drew, My hopes to realize, And that my sight imagined to Perceive in fleshly guise?
Or was she nothing of all these, But just an accident Contrived for me by Fate’s decrees With murderous intent?
OF FALLING IN LOVE THROUGH DESCRIPTION
One of the strangest origins of passion is when a man falls in love through merely hearing a description of the other party, without ever having set eyes on the beloved. In such a case he will progress through all the accustomed stages of love; there will be the sending to and fro of messengers; the exchange of letters, the anxiety, the deep emotion, the sleeplessness; and all this without actual sight of the object of affection. Stories, descriptions of beautiful qualities, and the reporting of news about the fair one have a manifest effect on the soul; to hear a girl’s voice singing behind a wall may well move the heart to love and preoccupy the mind.
All this has occurred to more than one man. In my opinion, however, such a love is a frail building with no foundations. If a man’s thoughts are absorbed by passionate regard for one whom he has never seen, the inevitable result is that whenever he is alone with his own reflections, he will represent to himself an imaginary picture of the person whose identity he keeps in his mind; he is carried away by his fantasy, and visualizes and dreams of her only. Then, if some day he sees the object of his fanciful passion, either his love is confirmed, or it is wholly nullified.
This kind of romance usually takes place between veiled ladies of guarded palaces and aristocratic households and their male kinsfolk; the love of women is more rapacious in these cases than that of men, because women are weak creatures and their natures respond well to this sort of attraction, which enthralls them completely. I have described this in verse:
O thou who chidest me
Because my heart has been
Entranced by passion utterly
For one I have not seen
Thou dost exaggerate
In all that thou dost speak
Upon my passion, and dost state
My love is poor and weak.
For say: what do men know
Of Paradise above,
Save they have heard that it is so
And what they hear they love?
I also have some lines on the theme of admiring the beauty of a singing voice, without ever having seen the singer:
Love’s soldiery assailed mine ear
And now do occupy
My heart; their triumph doth appear
In my submissive eye
In the lines which follow I describe the situation of truth belying conjecture, when the lover finally lays eyes on his beloved:
They spoke in glowing terms of thee,
But when at last I chanced to see
That they described, at once I knew
Their words were nonsense and untrue.
Such is the drum: in origin
‘Tis nothing but an empty skin,
But when the drummer beats its hide
A man is scared, and terrified!
I have also stated the converse case:
So, too, the stories men recite
To picture the supreme delight
Of Paradise, fall short by far
Of those its actual pleasures are.
These conditions are also obtained in the relations between friends and comrades, as I shall show in a personal reminiscence. There was once a strong bond of affection between myself and a member of a noble family; we corresponded frequently, but had never set eyes on one another. Then Allah granted me the boon of meeting him; and only a few days elapsed when a violent aversion and strong antipathy rose between us, that has continued unabated down to the present day. I have put this incident into verse:
Thou didst convert my loving dream
To loathing, and to hate extreme
So copyists have oft times slipped
And quite transformed a manuscript
The opposite transpired in the case of my relations with Abu `Amin Ibn Abi `Amin (God keep him in His mercy!) Once I truly detested him, and he fully reciprocated my feelings; this was before I had seen him, and he me. The root of the matter was a slanderous report, which had been carried to each of us about the other, aggravated by an aversion existing between our respective fathers that sprung from their mutual rivalry in the race for preferment at court and worldly promotion. Then Allah so ordained that we should come together; thereafter he became my dearest friend, and I his likewise, until the day that death parted us. The following verses were written by me to commemorate this friendship:
He was a brother, whom I gained By meeting, and thereby obtained A truly noble treasure, His friendship was not wished by me, And I supposed his company Would yield me little pleasure
But he, who was my erstwhile foe, Became my friend, he, whom I so Abhorred, my heart’s sweet rapture, And having ever sought to fly From meeting him, thereafter I Sought ever him to capture.
As for another, Abu Shakir ‘Abd al-Rahman Ibn Muhammad al-Qabri, he was my friend for a long while before I ever saw him; then we met, our love was confirmed, and it has continued without interruption right down to the present time.
OF FALLING IN LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
Often it happens that love fastens itself to the heart as the result of a single glance. This variety of love is divided into two classes:
The first class is that a man will fall head over heels in love with a mere form, without knowing who that person may be, what her name is, or where she lives. This has happened to more than one man.
Our friend Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Ishaq informed me, quoting a trustworthy authority whose name has escaped me –– though I believe it was Judge Ibn al-Hadha’ that the poet Yusuf Ibn Harun, better known as al-Ramadi, was one day passing the Gate of the Perfumers at Cordoba, a place where ladies often congregated, when he spotted a young girl who, as he said, “completely captured my heart, so that all my limbs were penetrated by the love of her.” So instead of going to the mosque he followed her while she set off towards the bridge, which she then crossed and came to al-Rabad. When she reached the mausolea of the Banu Marwan (God have mercy on their souls!) that are erected over their graves in the cemetery of al-Rabad, beyond the river, she saw him separate from the throngs of the people onto her path. She accordingly went up to him and asked, “Why are you following me?”
He told her how sorely smitten he was with her, and she replied, “Have done with that! Do not seek to shame me; you have no prospect of achieving your purpose, and there is no way for you to gratify your desire.
He countered, “I am satisfied by merely looking at you.”
“That is permitted,” she replied. Then he asked her, “My lady, are you a free woman, or a slave?”
“I am a slave,” she answered. “And what is your name?” he enquired. “Khalwa,” she told him. “And to whom do you belong?” He asked next. To this she retorted, “By Allah, you are likelier to know what inhabits the Seventh Heaven, than the answer to that question. Do not seek the impossible!”
“My lady,” he begged, “Where may I see you again?”
“Where you saw me today, at the same hour, every Friday. Will you go off now, or shall I?” she replied.
“You go off, with Allah’s protection!” he replied. So she went off in the direction of the bridge; and he could not follow her, because she kept looking around to see if he was going with her or not. When she passed the gate of the bridge, he came after her but could find no trace of her whatsoever. “And by Allah”, said Abu `Umar (that is to say, Yusuf Ibn Harun), recounting the story of his adventure, “I have frequented the Perfumers’ Gate and al-Rabad the whole time from then till now, but I have never come upon any further news of her. I know not whether the heavens have devoured her, or whether the earth has swallowed her up; and the feeling I have in my heart on her account is hotter than burning coals.” This is the Khalwa whose name he celebrates in his love lyrics. Thereafter he had come across some news of her after he journeyed to Zaragoza for her sake, but that too long a story.
This sort of thing happens often; I have a poem on the subject:
Against my heart mine eye designed
Great wrong, and anguish to my mind,
Which sin my spirit to requite
Hath loosed these tears against my sight?
How shall mine eye behold in fact
This justice that my tears exact,
Seeing that in their flood profound
My weeping eye is wholly drowned?
Since I had never seen her yet
I could not know her, when we met,
The final thing of her I knew
Was what I saw at that first view.
The second class of this love at first sight is with a young lady whose name, place of abode and origin are known to him. The difference here is the speed or tardiness with which the affair passes off. When a man falls in love at first sight, and forms a sudden attachment as the result of a fleeting glance, that proves him to be irresolute, and shows that he will soon forget his romantic adventure; a testament to his fickleness and inconstancy. As with all things, the quicker they grow, the quicker they decay, while on the other hand what is slowly produced is slowly consumed.
A young fellow I know, the son of a clerk, was one day observed by a lady of noble birth, high position and strict seclusion; she saw him passing by, while peeping out from a place of vantage in her home, and conceived an attachment for him which he reciprocated. They exchanged epistles for a time, by ways more delicate than the edge of a fine-ground sword; and were it not that I cared to keep such ruses hidden for their sake, I would have explained plots that would have astonished the most intelligent of men. I pray that God in His great bounty will draw over us and all good Muslims the curtain of His mercy. He is indeed sufficient for our needs.
OF FALLING IN LOVE AFTER LONG ASSOCIATION
Some men there are whose love only becomes true after long conversation, much contemplation, and extended familiarity. Such a one is likely to persist and to be steadfast in his affection, untouched by the passage of time, for what enters with difficulty does not go out easily as well. That is my own way in these matters, and it is confirmed by Holy Tradition. For God, as we are informed by our teachers, when He commanded the Spirit to enter Adam’s body, that was like an earthen vessel –– and the Spirit was struggling to enter –– said to it, “Enter unwillingly, and come out of it again unwillingly!”
I have myself seen a man of this description who, whenever he sensed within himself the beginnings of a passionate attachment, or conceived a penchant for some form whose beauty he admired, at once employed the device of shunning that person and giving up all association with them, lest his feelings become more intense and the affair goes beyond his control, and he finds himself completely stampeded. This proves how closely love cleaves to such people’s hearts, and once it lays hold of them never loses its grip. I have a poem on this subject, and will quote an extract:
I am resolved to keep afar
Wherever love’s attractions are;
The man of sense, as I detect,
Is ever shrewd and circumspect.
I have observed that love begins
When some poor fellow for his sins,
Thinks, it is thrilling, ever so,
To gaze on cheeks where roses glow.
But while he sports so joyfully
With not a care to mar his glee,
The links are forging, one by one,
And he’s enchained, before he’s done.
So there he is, deluded fool;
Stepping benignly in the pool
He slips, and ere he can look round
He’s swept along the flood, and drowned.
I indeed marvel profoundly at all those who pretend to fall in love at first sight; I prefer to consider such love as merely a kind of lust, and give no credence to the belief that this sort of attachment can really possess the inmost heart, and penetrate the veil of the soul’s recess. Love has never truly gripped my bowels, save after a long lapse of time, and constant companionship with the person concerned, sharing with them my every occupation, be it earnest or frivolous. So I am alike in consolation and in passion; I have never in my life forgotten any romance, and my nostalgia for every former attachment is such that I struggle to eat and drink –– the man who this does not apply to finds complete relief ––I have never wearied of anything else once I have known such a love, and neither have I hastened to feel at home with anything else on first acquaintance. Similarly I have never longed for a change for change’s sake, in any of the things that I have possessed; I am speaking here not only of friends and comrades, but also of all the other things a man uses –– clothes, riding beasts, food, and so on.
Life holds no joy for me, and I do nothing but hang my head and feel utterly cast down, ever since I first tasted the bitterness of being separated from those I love. It is an anguish that constantly revisits me, an agony of grief that ceases not for a moment to assail me. My remembrance of past happiness has abated for me every joy that I may look for in the future. I am a dead man, though counted among the living, slain by sorrow and buried by sadness, entombed while yet a dweller on the face of this mortal earth. Allah be praised, whatever be the circumstances that befall us; there is indeed no other God but Him!
I have meditated upon this theme in verse as follows.
True love is not a flower
That springeth in an hour;
Its flint will not strike fire
At casual desire.
Love is an infant rare
Begotten, slow to bear,
Its lime must mingle long
Before its base is strong.
And then not soon will it
Be undermined, and split,
Firm will its structure stand,
Its fabric still expand.
This truth is readily
Confirmed, because we see
That things too quickly grown
Are swiftly overthrown.
Mine is a stubborn soil
To plough with arduous toil,
Intractable indeed
To tiller and to seed.
But once the roots begin
To strike and thrive there in,
Come bounteous rain, come drought,
The lusty stem will sprout.
Now let no man think or imagine that what I have said here is contrary to my statement, inscribed in the exordium of this treatise, that love is a union of souls effected within the substance of their heavenly world. On the contrary, my present remarks confirm that assertion. For we know that in this lower world the soul is shrouded in many veils, that it is encompassed by all those earthy, mundane instincts; in consequence many of its true attributes are obscured. And although these obstacles do not preclude the soul entirely from achieving union with its fellow soul, nevertheless they stand in the way of that union, which may therefore only be truly realized after long and careful preparation and making ready. The soul must first be made aware of its points of resemblance and concord with its fellow soul; it must confront its own hidden temperaments with the corresponding temperaments of the beloved. Then and then only will veritable union be consummated, and that without further let or hindrance.
As for what transpires at first blush as a result of certain accidental circumstances –– physical admiration, and visual enchantment which does not go beyond mere external forms –– and this is the very secret and meaning of carnal desire; when carnal desire moreover becomes so overflowing that it surpasses these bounds, and when such an overflow coincides with a spiritual union, in which the natural instincts share equally with the soul; the resulting phenomenon is called passionate love. Herein lies the root of the error, which misleads a man into asserting that he loves two persons, or is passionately enamored of two entirely different individuals. All this is to be explained as springing out of carnal desire, as we have just described; it is called love only metaphorically, and not in the true meaning of the term. As for the true lover, the one whose yearning of his soul is so excessive that it diverts him from all his religious and mundane occupations; how then should he have room to busy himself with a second love affair? I have put this point into verse:
He lies, and perjures all that’s true, Who swears he is in love with two He shares in falsehood equally With that damned miscreant, Manichee.
The heart has not sufficient place To hold two sweets in one embrace, Nor may the second love affair Claim with the first an equal share.
For as the Reason is unique It cannot know, though it may seek, Another Power to create Besides the All Compassionate.
And so the Heart, that’s likewise one, Is constituted to love none Except that single darling dear, Be he afar or be he near.
The man who claims a dual love Is thus, as these examples prove, A doubtful follower of Love’s laws, A traitor to Religion’s cause.
And by that selfsame reasoning True Faith is too a single thing; He who a second serves as well Condemns himself an infidel.
I know a certain young man who is rich, of noble birth, and of the finest education, and who made a practice of trading slave-girls. He would obtain girls who would be, to begin with, innocent of any regard for him; still worse, she would positively dislike him, for indeed his ways were not very engaging, with that perpetual scowl which never left his face, particularly when he was with women; yet within a very short time he had mastered her to his will. Thereupon her aversion would be changed into excessive love, extreme affection, and quite shameless infatuation; whereas formerly she was irritated to be in his company, now she could not endure to be parted from him. The same thing happened with a remarkable number of girls he owns. A friend of mine asked him once how he explained his success; the man smiled at my friend and explained: I allow the woman to expend her desires entirely before I do, as well as embrace her strongly during our time together.
This example –– and I could quote others –– proves that when a spiritual concord is once established, love is immediately engendered. Physical contact completes the circuit and thus enables the current of love to flow freely into the soul.
1 It’s interesting to note that this slave girl, already having shown her shrewdness and courage, hints to him she is a slave through this line alone, as it would be impermissible for him to gawk at a free woman.
2 I admit to a bit of censorship here –– In the original Arabic, Ibn Hazm describes this part of the story much more explicitly. The original translator to English tried to gloss over it entirely, so I found a middle ground. Refer to the original to see what I mean.
Ibn Hazm (994-1064 A.D.) was an Andalusian philosopher, poet, jurist, and theologian. He was the leading proponent of the short-lived Zahiri school of Islamic jurisprudence; though his juridicial opinions remain controversial, his literature and poetry remain popular with many.