This is the first one I’ve read and I found it quaint. The early Moor empire in Spain was a very cool place. They didn’t oppress the locals at all. In fact, the Islamic-lead culture thrived with all the local Christians and Jews being very much a part of it’s success – both working for it and prospering from it (it helped that the wealthy founder was basically kicked out of the heart of the Caliphate and had to build his own paradise somewhere else). And everybody was cool until the first dynasty was overthrown and the new rulers decided to convert the locals to Islam at the point of a sword. Well, they shouldn’t have done that. Comes the First Crusade and no more Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula.
But for a long time there, it was one of the best places to live in the world. However, still very “thou may not have sex” as far as how proper people are supposed to maintain all outward appearances.
So this is a quaint little piece that pays homage to my predilection for eyes. So I also thought I would dress it up with some steamy images. So a link has been provided to a version interspersed with images about his descriptions (as interpreted at my whim) DO NOT click on the link unless you are prepared to see graphic sexual imagery. Otherwise, his treatise kind of … well I'm sure it was deep in 1000 AD, but, for the most part, everybody knows this ;-)
Cordova
MIRROR OF THE SOUL
Ibn Hazm, from The Ring of the Dove. The Spanish-born Muslim theologian, littérateur, and jurist produced some four hundred works before, during, and after the fall of the Caliphate of Cordova in 1031. His ambitious Book of Religions and Sects is one of the earliest works of comparative religious history.
After verbal allusion, when once the lover's advance has been accepted and an accord established,
the next following step consists in hinting with the glances of the eyes.
Glances play an honorable part in this phase, and achieve remarkable results. By means of a glance the lover can be dismissed, admitted,
promised,
threatened, upbraided,
cheered, commanded, forbidden;
a glance will lash the ignoble, and give warning of the presence of spies; a glance may convey laughter and sorrow,
ask a question and make a response, refuse and give — in short, each one of these various moods and intentions has its own particular kind of glance, which cannot be precisely realized except by ocular demonstration. Only a small fraction of the entire repertory is capable of being sketched out and described, and I will therefore attempt to describe here no more than the most elementary of these forms of expression.
To make a signal with the comer of the eye is to forbid the lover something;
to droop the eye is an indication of consent;
to prolong the gaze is a sign of suffering and distress;
to break off the gaze is a mark of relief; to make signs of closing the eyes is an indicated threat. To turn the pupil of the eye in a certain direction
and then to turn it back swiftly calls attention to the presence of a person so indicated. A clandestine signal with the comer of both eyes is a question; to turn the pupil rapidly from the middle of the eye to the interior angle is a demonstration of refusal; to flutter the pupils of both eyes this way and that is a general prohibition. The rest of these signals can be understood by actually seeing them demonstrated.
You should realize that the eye takes the place of a messenger, and that with its aid all the beloved's intention can be apprehended. The four senses besides are also gateways of the heart and passages giving admission to the soul; the eye is however the most eloquent, the most expressive, and the most efficient of them all. The eye is the true outrider and faithful guide of the soul; it is the soul's well-polished mirror, by means of which it comprehends all truths, attains all qualities, and understands all sensible phenomena. It is a well-known saying that hearing of a thing is not like seeing it; this was already remarked by Poleron, the master of physiognomy, who established the eye as the most reliable basis for forming judgment.
We state and affirm, by the tenor of these presents, that love cannot extend its rights over two married persons. For indeed lovers grant each other all, mutually and freely, without being constrained by any motive of necessity, whereas husband and wife are holden by their duty to submit their wills to each other and to refuse each other nothing.
-Comtesse de Champagne, 1174
Even if all this were not due to any superior virtue in the eye itself, yet the fact remains that the substance of the eye is the loftiest and most sublime of all substances. For the eye possesses the property of light, and by it alone may colors by perceived; no other organ surpasses it in range and extent, since by the eye the bodies of the stars themselves in their distant spheres may be observed, and the heavens seen for all their tremendous elevation and remoteness. This is simply because the eye is united in the nature of its constitution with the mirror of which we have been speaking. It perceives those things, and reaches them as in a single bound, needing not to traverse the intervening distance by stages, or to alight at halting places en route. The eye does not travel through space by labored movements.
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