L’islam des troubadours - Les origines arabo-musulmanes de l’amour courtois - XIe-XIIe siècles - Mohamed Benzemrane

L’islam des troubadours - Les origines arabo-musulmanes de l’amour courtois - XIe-XIIe siècles - Mohamed Benzemrane

(The Arab-Muslim origins of courtly love, 11th-12th centuries)

A look at the Arab-Muslim roots of courtly culture. The author shows how Arab civilization inaugurated an elevated conception of love and an art of loving that inspired the West in the Middle Ages, as witnessed by the poetry of the Duke of Aquitaine Guillaume IX and the creations of the troubadours of Occitania, influenced by Arabo-Andalusian lyricism.

While Europe struggled with a Middle Ages of tensions and shackles, in which women were often figurines, Arab civilization from antiquity onwards had inaugurated a high concept of courtly love, developing a veritable art of loving.
The avant-garde themes and metrical forms of this poetry, based on the spiritualization of love and the sublimation of chastity, were to inspire, through the Duke of Aquitaine Guillaume IX, the poetic-musical creations of the troubadours of Occitania.
This richly illustrated book retraces the creative epic of these encounters between East and West, and inaugurates a fundamental reflection on this forgotten heritage.

Collection Histoire et perspectives méditerranéennes, L’Harmattan.

The author:

Mohamed Benzemrane, a humanities graduate and secondary school teacher, is also interested in the history of pre-Islamic Arabia and the origins of Christianity, as an auditor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études.