SOURCE: Giffen, Lois A. “Ibn Hazm and the Tawq al-hamāma.” In The Legacy of Muslim Spain, edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, pp. 420-42. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1992.

In the following essay, Giffen analyzes The Ring of the Dove, considering this treatise on love to be Ibn Hazm's literary masterpiece and examining its origins, structure, content, themes, reception, and depiction of women and Arab society.

Introduction

About three centuries after the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, and shortly before or after the thirtieth year of his very eventful life, ‘Alī b. Aḥmad b. Sa‘īd b. Hazm (384/994-456/1064) settled down to a quiet existence as a scholar in Játiva, a town not his own. Ibn Hazm had been born in Córdoba, his father Aḥmad having served at the court of the ‘Āmirid ḥājibs al-Manṣūr b. Abī ‘Āmir, his son ‘Abd...