Throughout the history of Islam, which lasted for eight centuries, Andalusia gave birth to geniuses and greats in the fields of Sharia, science, literature and the arts, as well as politics and the military, and advocates of a great degree of chastity and maintenance.
At the end of the Umayyad dynasty in Andalusia, and in its recent years of prosperity and turmoil as well, and in a house of honor, status and dominion in it, Ali bin Ahmed bin Saeed bin Hazm was born in 384 AH / 994 AD, and he is one of the prodigious men in the history of Andalusia and the geniuses of its intellectual and philosophical fields religious; That man who seems to have combined the contradictions and became the head of the apparent doctrine, and a jurist who explored the comparative study of all the jurisprudence schools, and a meditating philosopher, and even a politician, as his father was one of the great ministers, and at the same time he had a strong emotion, a delicate soul, and a heart that knew the value of love!
The great poet and mystic Ibn al-Arif al-Andalusi did not lie when he said: “The tongue of Ibn Hazm and the sword of al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf Sanwan.” It is an analogy from which we see the strength of Ibn Hazm’s tongue, its defamation of opponents, his present argument, and his brilliant statement, a language that caused enmity and hatred among his competitors. Those who weakened in front of him, and eventually resorted to burning his books on false accusations that made the man go to the remote farm of his fathers and grandfathers in his last years, retreating to science, and a future for students of science from all over Andalusia!
But Ibn Hazm also gave us a wonderful color of Arabic and Andalusian literature, in which his courage, taste and memories were evident in the stages of youth and love. Who is Ibn Hazm? Why did he write this book? How did he deal with his most prominent failures in this noble humanitarian field?! That’s what we’ll see next.
We knew that Ibn Hazm was the descendant of a well-off family, as his father was one of the ministers of the Umayyad state in its last days and years in Andalusia, and from here, Ibn Hazm grew up in an environment full of maidservants and women. He acknowledges this merit to the women of the palaces, saying: “I have seen women and learned about their secrets that no one else knows, because I was brought up in their rooms, and I grew up in their hands, and I did not know anyone else, and I did not sit with men except when I was young, and they taught me the Qur’an, and they narrated me Many poems, and they trained me in calligraphy, and my hard work and mental work since the beginning of my understanding, and I am in a very young age, has not been without knowing their reasons, searching for their news, and acquiring that.”[1]
This upbringing among the women of palaces, including the female slaves and concubines, that Ibn Hazm lived through until his youthful years affected his being and his feelings, and through it he realized the value of women in the world of men without a doubt. A value that will be evident in the stories of virgin love that he lived himself or witnessed in Cordoba, the capital of the Umayyad Andalusian Caliphate, or outside of other Andalusian cities.
These facts will appear when one of his friends sent to him from the city of Almeria, and he was living in Shatiba at the time, within the year 417 AH, asking him to write something about love and lovers while he was in his late youth, and despite his reluctance to write first, his pen is a lineage that removes from him what he was hiding From the anguish of love and his stories, and the feelings he harbored that needed to be moved towards the open and the ink of pens.
The greatest stories that Ibn Hazm told about his love for a slave girl was at the age of sixteen, and he loved her passionately, but she did not reciprocate the same feeling, and it seems that this repulsion and repulsion made the flames of love and longing ignite in his entity and soul, this was evident in his description of those moments even after the passage of time. More than fifteen years or more since that incident, he says in a sweet, graceful manner full of meaning and love:
“I can tell about myself that in the days of my youth I became acquainted with the love of a maid who grew up in our house, and she was at that time a girl of sixteen years, and she was extremely beautiful in her face, mind, chastity and purity, without joking, impregnable in giving, exquisite in human beings, well-drained, soft-spoken, low-tempered. Sight, very cautious, pure from defects, permanently polarized, abundant in reverence, amused by rebellion, no desires are directed towards her, greed does not stand on her, and she does not give hope to her, for her face attracts all hearts, and her condition is expelled from her mother… She is stopped by the seriousness of her matter, unwilling. In amusement, though she used to do the lute well, so I fell in love with her and loved her very much, so she sought for two years or so to answer me with a word and to hear the word in it, other than what happens in the hadith that appears to every listener, with the utmost striving, and I reached nothing at all from that.” [2].
Ibn Hazm tells how this slave girl, that is, the girl in our language today, was in the company of other girls and women in their spacious house, which was on a high top of the tops of Cordoba on an unforgettable sunny day, and how its windows were open to a clear panoramic panel from which the women and Ibn Hazm could be seen. Among them were the overflowing views of Cordoba, and how he was trying to get close to this girl, perhaps she would kindly give him a word or a glance, or just lean towards him, so that the longing in his heart would cool down even a little. He says:
Then they moved to a reedhouse that was in our house overlooking the garden of the house, and from it he was shown all of Cordoba and its examinations (its areas), the doors were open, and they looked through the balconies (balconies) and I was among them, for I remember that I was referring to the door in which there is a woman near her, It is only that she sees me next to her, and she leaves that door and intends another in the gentleness of movement, so I deliberately intend to the door to which she has become, and she returns to such an act from the demise to another, and she had known my cost (my love and attachment) to her, and she did not The rest of the women feel what we are in, because they were many.”[3]
Then Ibn Hazm tells how political events forced his father to move from eastern Cordoba to its western, where their old homes were in the last years of the collapse of the Umayyad rule, and the turmoil of revolutions between 399-402 AH, and how these incidents led to the persecution of his father, the vizier, and Ibn Hazm’s departure against him About his beloved whom he loved, even if the death of his father came in the year 404 AH when he was at the age of twenty, that girl came for condolences among the women who came, and he saw her and increased his injury, and raised memories that he tried to forget, he says:
“It has stirred up a deep soul, stirred a stillness, reminded me of an old covenant, a love that lasted, a bygone age, a healthy time, my old months, successive news, eternity and days gone, traces that have been buried, and renewed my sorrows and thoughts.” I was on that day in a state of suffering with many faces, and I did not forget, but the anger increased and the pain flared up, the sadness was confirmed, the regret multiplied, and the conscience brought what was latent from it and answered it, so I said a piece of it:
He weeps for the dead who died while he was honored… and the beard has more to do with shedding tears.
How woeful is the pity of a person who has died… and what is unjustly regrettable for the slain.”[4]
This tragedy was not the only failure of Ibn Hazm in the path of his love, but he quickly became prejudiced against himself and forgot about that girl or neglected her a little, until another named “Yes” preoccupied him with her love, morals and beauty. His first love, compatible with him, obedient to him, it seems that they agreed to walk together until the end of life, but fate has its rulings in force, he says:
“I was the most costly of people and the greatest of them in love with a maidservant of me who, except for her name, was yes, and she was the wish of the one who wished, and the ultimate in goodness in character and manner and approval of me, and I was the father of her excuse, and we were rewarded with affection, so fates afflicted me with her, and nights and days passed, and the third became dust and stones, and the age of When she died, she was under twenty years old, and she was below me in age, so I lived after seven months without stripping my clothes, and I did not have a tear for the rigidity of my eyes and the lack of happiness for her. And he turned, and some of my dear body parts over me hurriedly and obediently, and I did not like to live after it, and I did not forget to mention it, nor did I forget anything but it, and my love for it pardoned everything that came before it, and prohibited what came after it”[5].
We find among the tales of “The Pigeon Collar” some other stories in which Ibn Hazm’s endeavor was disappointed, and influenced him greatly, and the truth was one of the bravest historians, jurists and scholars of Sharia when he admitted these feelings in that book a thousand years ago, the love of Ibn Hazm, and his failures The one that followed him, did not forget that pleasure that flowed in his sweet-tasting words as we see them, as true as he was in conveying their meaning and even in their building. Romantic humanism in the history of literature after Islam is undoubtedly remarkable and surprising!