Ibn Hazam
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<< I consecrate a love which is pure and without stain:
your love is clearly carved and written inside me.
If in my spirit, there was any other thing but you,
I would tear it out and rip it apart with my own hands.
I want nothing else from you but love;
apart from this I ask for nothing
If I achieve it, the whole Earth and all Humanity
Will be like grains of dust to me, and the country’s inhabitants, like insects.>>
Ibn Hazm, El Collar de la Paloma (The Collar of the Dove).
He was born in the year 994 A.D. in the Moslem district of al-Mugira, today San Lorenzo, when Cordoba was one of the most highly-populated cities in the world, and easily the greatest in the Europe of its day. He came from Muladi origins, and was brought up in the palace court of Al-Hakem II, where his father worked as a civil servant. At the age of fourteen, he began to study with the best contemporary masters, and also belonged to a small circle of young aristocrats who spent their time reading and discussing literature. The Civil War in Al-Andalus changed everything, and after the death of his father and the widespread destruction of the city, he left Cordoba, only to return on one of two occasions. He was involved in the political struggle against the illegal Taifas kingdoms in Al-Andalus and later retired to the village of Montija (in Huelva), where he died in the year 1064. His statue stands near the Puerta de Sevilla (Gate of Seville), one of the monumental entrance gates to the World Heritage site of the Old City Centre.
Ibn-Hazm was a prolific writer, and wrote over four hundred works, on a wide variety of topics ranging from politics and theology to history or literature. His most important work was definitely The Collar of the Dove, a real milestone in Medieval literature which heavily influenced Romantic Medieval writing and paved the way for the genre known as Courtly Love.
