A Letter From a Friend
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Welcome. This is The Ring of the Dove, by the great scholar of al-Andalus, Ibn Hazm.
Nearly a thousand years ago, in the city of Xativa, in Muslim Spain, a scholar received a letter. It came from a dear friend in Almeria. And soon after, the friend himself arrived, having travelled a long, hard road to see him.
The friend had a request. Write me something, he said, about love. What it is. Its meanings, its causes, its signs, and what happens to those who experience it.
Ibn Hazm was a jurist, a theologian, and one of the sharpest minds of his age. And yet he agreed. He wrote this small book, in thirty chapters, full of observation, poetry, and true stories he had seen with his own eyes.
He promised to be honest. Not to exaggerate the way poets do. To describe love as it really is.
And, as we will see, he ends the book not with romance, but with faith. With chastity, and with Allah.
This is one of the most famous books ever written on love, and it begins with a friendship.
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