Romantic Love in the Arab World
This chapter further explores the cultural differences of romantic love, focusing on the perspective of Arabic nations. Although the concept of love in the Middle East and other Arabic regions has been a long-neglected topic among scholars, numerous anthr
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Romantic Love in the Arab World
Cultures reviewed in Chap. 8: Romantic Love in the Arab World
8.1 The Concept of Love in Arab Societies The topic of love in the Middle East has been missed from cross-cultural studies and the sociology of emotions for quite a long time, specifically framed within an Arab context (Oghia 2015). What does romantic love mean in the Muslim Middle East? The romantic themes were rooted in the ancient Moor’s culture and are still apparent in modern literature written by Arab authors, in particular by the influential twentieth-century artist and mystic poet Gibran (1997). Arab music also acts as © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 V. Karandashev, Romantic Love in Cultural Contexts, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42683-9_8
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a salient and cathartic avenue for emotional and romantic expression of love (Racy 2003). Romantic love revealed its roots in various cultural outlets and established a historical and cultural foundation in Arab societies (Oghia 2005, p. 282). The Arab poetic tradition substantially influenced European notions of courtly love. Rougemont argued that the tradition of courtly lyrical poetry in twelfth-century France had its origins in the convergence of Persian Manichaeism and Middle Eastern Sufi rhetoric transmitted by Muslim Spain (De Rougemont 1940/1974, pp. 102–107). These Eastern sources of romantic imagery and practice drew on Arabian models in the odes of oral poets of the late pre-Islamic period. That native Arab romanticism rhapsodizing about the qualities of the remembered beloved was a wellspring of passionate language for the Western society. The tale of Layla and Majnun is a perfect example of the Arab poetics of love, the well known of the early Arabic romantic stories. It was that of the star-crossed lovers, whose unconsummated passion has inspired both the scholarly and the popular imagination of the Arab world for many centuries. Ahdat Soueif (1999), an Arab novelist, once poetically described the multitude of meanings that “love” possesses in Arabic: “Hubb” is love, “ishq” is love that entwines two people together, “shaghaf” is love that nests in the chambers of the heart, “hayam” is love that wanders the earth, “teeh” is love in which you lose yourself, “walah” is love that carries sorrow within it, “sababah” is love that exudes from your pores, “hawa” is love that shares its name with “air” and with “falling”, “gharm” is love that is willing to pay the price. (pp. 386–387).
Inhorn (2007) and Trawick (1990a) describe that love, or hubb as it is called in Arabic, is a highly extolled virtue, which is explicated in many spiritual teachings and has saturated Middle Eastern life in popular culture and affective relations between spouses, families, and other close relatives. In terms of popular culture, as Oghia (2005) argues, the Middle Eastern region is abounding with love stories in music, literature, and poetry. The popular Arabic songs and movies depict hubb as longing, attraction, desire, as well as
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