LOVE has certain signs, which the intelligent man quickly detects, and the shrewd man readily recognizes. Of these the first is the brooding gaze: the eye is the wide gateway of the soul, the scrutinizer of its secrets, conveying its most private thoughts, and giving expression to its deepest-hid feelings. A man in love will give prodigally to the limit of his capacity, in a way that formerly he would have refused; as if he were the one receiving the donation, he the one whose happiness is the object in view; all this in order that he may show off his good points, and make himself desirable. How often has the miser opened his purse strings, the scowler relaxed his frown, the coward leapt heroically into the fray, the clod suddenly become sharp-witted, the boor turned into the perfect gentleman, the stinker transformed himself into the elegant dandy, the sloucher smartened up, the decrepit recaptured his lost youth, the godly gone wild, the self-respecting kicked over the traces—and all because of love!

From The Ring of the Dove, by Ibn Hazam of Cordoba (994-1064)

I recently visited Cordoba, Spain.  I walked by the narrow and cozy streets of the ancient Jewish quarters. I stood in the Mosque, admiring one thousand columns of onyx, marble, jasper, and granite, all crowned by striped red-and-white arches. The dawning sun  lit up the golden arabesques and the fine carpets of pink ceramic tiles above the arch portals, and the Moslem moon climbed the walls of the compound in a night scented with orange blossoms. On the Roman Bridge over the Guadalquivir River, I listened to the murmur of the water and the songs of numerous swallows. In this metropolis, Ibn Hazam was born in 994, when the artists and writers had already turned this city into the main bastion of civilization in the world. The surroundings inspired the author to write one of the most important treatises about love—The Ring of the Dove. His observations remain valid: “The eye is the wide gateway of the soul, the scrutinizer of its secrets, conveying its most private thoughts, and giving expression to its deepest-hid feelings.”