The Affinities of Love, by Ibn Hazm Al-Andaloussi

The affinities of love, by Ibn Hazm Al-Andaloussi: Tales and beautiful love stories experienced within Muslim society, Translation of "Tawq al hamâma: The dove's necklace" by Léon Bercher

Ibn Hazm, "the philosopher of Courdoba" (991-1063) was one of the most brilliant minds of Muslim Spain (Andalusia). Theologian, jurist, polemicist, etc. Paradoxically, he passed on to posterity mainly thanks to this book “Tawq al-hamâma”. Undoubtedly the most original work of its kind in all of Arabic literature. This is a real treatise on love describing its problematic causes, its appearance and its essence. Thirty chapters are devoted to it depicting the nature of love, the people who fall in love in dreams, those who fall in love on simple description, those who ignite a single look, those who love only in the long run, the allusions by speech, the language of the eyes, the exchange of correspondence, the messenger, the keeping of the secret, its disclosure, submission, insubordination, the censor, the helpful friend, the watchman, the informer, the union, avoidance, consumption, oblivion, death, to end on the ugliness of sin and the merits of continence. A few centuries later this work has lost none of its freshness