Love’s Grammar

Yasmine Seale presents The Dove’s Necklace, a fascinating text on the nature of love from 11th-century Cordoba, and reads from her translation in progress. A masterpiece of Arabic prose and poetry, a jewel of observation, and a window into the intimate life of Muslim Spain, The Dove’s Necklace was composed by the young Ibn Hazm before he became the towering jurist and theologian we know today. Though he later renounced the work, it was to have a deep and lasting influence on the literature of courtly love.