Peace, one and all…
‘Mahabbat (love) is said to be derived from hibbat, which are seeds that fall to the earth in the desert. The name hubb (love) was given to such desert seeds (hibb), because love is the source of life just as seeds are the origin of plants. As, when the seeds are scattered in the desert, they become hidden in the earth, and rain falls upon them and the sun shines upon them and cold and heat pass over them, yet they are not corrupted by the changing seasons, but grow up and bear flowers and give fruit, so love, when it takes its dwelling in the heart, is not corrupted by presence or absence, by pleasure or pain, by separation or union.
Others say mahabbat is derived from hubb , meaning ‘a jar full of stagnant water’, because when love is collected in the heart and fills it, there is no room there for any thought except of the beloved, as Shibli says: ‘Love is called mahabbat because it obliterates (tamhu) from the heart everything except the beloved’.
Others say that mahabbat is derived from hubb, meaning ‘the four conjoined pieces of wood on which a water-jug is placed, because a lover lightly bears whatever his beloved metes out to him – honour or disgrace, pain or pleasure, fair treatment or foul’. According to others, mahabbat is derived from habb, the plural of habbat and habbat is the core of the heart, where love resides. In this case, mahabbat is called by the name of its dwelling-place, a principle of which there are many examples in Arabic. Others derive it from habab, ‘bubbles of water and the effervescence thereof in heavy rainfall’, because love is the effervescence of the heart in longing for union with the beloved. As the body subsists through the spirit, so the heart subsists through love, and love subsists through vision of, and union with, the beloved.
Others, again, declare that hubb is a name applied to pure love, because the Arabs call the pure white of the human eye habbat al-insan, just as they call the pure black (core) of the heart habbat al-qalb: the latter is the seat of love, the former the seat of vision. Hence, the heart and the eye are rivals in love, as the poet says:
‘My heart envires mine eye the pleasure of seeing,
And mine eye envies my heart the pleasure of meditating’
(Ali ibn Uthman al-Hujwiri, Kashf al-Mahjub, trans. RA Nicholson)
Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman
