ABSTRACT
Around the time of the birth of Solomon ibn Gabirol in peaceful Malaga, the nearby city of Cordoba, capital of the liberal-minded Umayyad caliphate of the same name, found itself awash in turmoil. The Berber invasion and sack of the city in 1013 had defeated the religiously tolerant Umayyads and caused the city to begin to crumble. 1 Those who had actively and vocally served or otherwise supported the defeated rulers found it prudent to seek residence elsewhere. And so it was that the aforementioned Abu Muḥammād ‘Alī b. Aḥmad b. Ḥazm, Muslim theologian; scholar of ḥadīth, theology, and fiqh; poet; and master of Arabic grammar, literature, and lexicography uprooted himself from the beloved city of his birth and fled. Over the next six years, Ibn Ḥazm wandered about Andalusia, moving from city to city and in and out of prison on charges of political insubordination. When word reached him that an Umayyad claimant to the throne, al-Murtaḍā (‘Abd al-Raḥman IV), had raised an army to fight against the Berbers and redeem Cordoba, Ibn Ḥazm joined him as vizier and in his march to Granada. But success came to the Umayyads only in 1023, when the new caliph, al-Mustaẓhir (‘Abd al-Raḥmān V), finally re-seized the city and the caliphate. 2 Rewarded for his loyalty, Ibn Ḥazm was once against appointed vizier, a position that ended a mere seven weeks later with the caliph's assassination and Ibn Ḥazm's imprisonment. Ibn Ḥazm's whereabouts over the four years post-incarceration are not known, but in 1027 he resurfaced in exile once again, this time in the Valencian city of Játiva. Disillusioned with politics, in need of diverting himself from his grief and loneliness, and in response to a request from a friend (possibly the Cordoban secular poet Abu ‘Amr b. Shuhayd, 992–1035), Ibn Ḥazm sat down to compose a work on poetry and poetics entitled Ṭawq al-ḥamāma (The Dove's Neck Ring). 3
