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طوق الحمامة في الألفة والألاف

Pages
144
Published
1022
Language
Arabic

Synopsis

Composed around 1022 while Ibn Hazm was living in Játiva, in Al-Andalus, 'Tawq al-Hamama' ('The Ring of the Dove') is a treatise on the nature and course of romantic love, unfolding across thirty chapters on its signs, its stages, fidelity, betrayal, separation and loss.

Ibn Hazm draws on his own life and on stories of lovers he knew in Andalusian society, illustrating his prose observations throughout with his own poetry. It is his only surviving work of literature, otherwise known as a jurist and theologian, and survives today in a single medieval manuscript (Leiden University Library, MS Or. 927).

English readers reach it chiefly through A.J. Arberry's 1953 translation, 'The Ring of the Dove: A Treatise on the Art and Practice of Arab Love.'

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