The Ring of the Dove (Arabic: طوق الحمامة, Ṭawq al-Ḥamāmah) is a treatise on love written ca. 1022 by Ibn Hazm. Normally a writer of theology and law, The Ring of the Dove is his only work of literature. Ibn Hazm borrowed heavily from Plato's Phaedrus, though the bulk of the work was still his own writing, rather than an anthology of other works. Although the human aspects of affection are the primary concern, the book was still written from the perspective of a devout Muslim, and as such chastity and restraint were common themes.
The book provides a glimpse into Ibn Hazm's own psychology. Ibn Hazm's teenage infatuation with one of his family's maids is often quoted as an example of the sort of chaste, unrequited love about which the author wrote.
The work has been published into English multiple times. A. R. Nykl of the Oriental Institute of Chicago translated the work, publishing in 1931 and A. J. Arberry's translation was published in 1951.
Famous quotes containing the words ring and/or dove:
“He will not idly dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord before nightfall in the short days of winter; but every stroke will be husbanded, and ring soberly through the wood; and so will the strokes of that scholars pen, which at evening record the story of the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the reader, long after the echoes of his axe have died away.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“And had it been the dove from Noahs ark,
Returning there from her successful search,
Which in their way that moment chanced to fall,
They would have eat her, olive-branch and all.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (17881824)