Tazyin al-Aswaq fi Akhbar al-Ushshaq
- Author died
- 1008 AH
- Editions
- Tazyin al-Aswaq fi Akhbar al-Ushshaq
Tazyin al-Aswaq fi Akhbar al-Ushshaq (Adorning the Markets with the Accounts of Passionate Lovers), also titled Tazyin al-Aswaq bi-Tafsil Ashwaq al-Ushshaq (Adorning the Markets with the Details of Lovers' Longings), is an Arabic literary anthology on romantic love, passionate yearning, and the lore of lovers by the blind physician and scholar Dawud al-Antaki (d. 1008 AH / 1599 CE) .
Subject and Structure
The book is classified within Arabic belles-lettres (adab) and focuses on the phenomena and psychology of passionate love (ishq) . It opens with the praising formula: «الحمد لله الذي أطلع في بروج اعتدال القدود شموس المحاسن والجمال...» ("Praise be to God who made the suns of grace and beauty rise in the zodiacs of well-proportioned statures...") . In its opening discussions, the author addresses the definitions and traditions concerning passionate love, including the report: من عشق فعف، فمات دخل الجنة ("Whoever falls passionately in love yet remains chaste, and dies, enters Paradise") . In manuscript catalogs, the work is also recorded as an abridgment of Ibrahim ibn Umar al-Biqa'i's Ashwaq al-Ushshaq .
The work is organized into dedicated chapters covering diverse aspects of love and the states of lovers :
- The behavioral and emotional stages of lovers, including the forms of abandonment (such as coquettish, wearying, punitive, and innate abandonment) .
- Physical and psychological remedies designed to soothe passionate infatuation and induce solace .
- Anecdotes of lovers from diverse social backgrounds, including those who perished from grief, those who achieved union after separation, and those afflicted by unfaithfulness or betrayal .
- Selections of love poetry (ghazal), witty literary banter (mujun), rhetorical allusions (talmih), double entendres (malahin), and poetic inscriptions found on rings, girdles, and drinking vessels .
Reception and Editions
Siddiq Hasan Khan commended Tazyin al-Aswaq alongside Ibn Abi Hajlah's Diwan al-Sababah, describing its chapters as containing elegant phrasing, delicate poetry, and graceful narratives capable of providing healing insight into the afflictions of lovers . Conversely, modern literary critics, such as Abd al-Muta'al al-Sa'idi, noted that some historical anecdotes and verses transmitted in the book contain fabricated poetry and anachronisms reflecting the literary weakness of later eras rather than authentic early Arabic poetry .
The book was printed multiple times in Cairo (including editions in 1279, 1302, 1305, 1308, 1319, and 1328 AH) and Bulaq (1281 and 1291 AH) . In the 1302 AH Cairo edition at al-Matba'a al-Azhariyya, Diwan al-Sababah was printed in its margins . It was subsequently published in Beirut in two volumes (1957 and 1972), as well as in a single-volume edition by Dar Maktabat al-Hilal in 1986 .
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