Lit & Found: Yasmine Seale Translates Ibn Hazm

Yesterday on Twitter, poet-translator Yasmine Seale announced: “I’m thrilled to be translating Tawq al-Hamama, the great book on love from medieval Cordoba—a jewel of observation and a window on the intimate life of Muslim Spain—for @LibraryArabLit. It survives thanks to a single manuscript. It has many poems.”

She then re-shared a poem from that manuscript, in her translation:

Ibn Hazm (994-1064 CE) was born in Córdoba, in the Caliphate of Córdoba, and died near what is now Sevilla. Although he is believed to have produced some 400 works, and was perhaps best known in his time for his works of jurisprudence and theology, his most famous today is certainly his work on love, The Ring of the Dove, which has inspired many other artists’ works down to our time.