From the first centuries of Islam until today, love has been a central theme of Sufi literature. Sufi poems and sayings from the early Islamic period focus upon the words ḥubb and maḥabba, presenting God as the Divine beloved and the spiritual wayfarer as the lover. They thus posit a duality between the lover and the beloved. In the later Persian Sufi tradition, beginning with Saw~niḥ of Aḥmad al-Ghaz~l‚ (d. 517/1123), many Sufis move from the use of ḥubb and maḥabba to the word `ishq—passionate or extreme love. `Ishq then comes to be presented as the ultimate reality itself from which both the lover and the beloved derive, and all aspects of creation and the spiritual path are viewed as aspects of it.
This paper examines the move from ḥubb and maḥabba to `ishq by contrasting the understanding of love in the early and middle periods. It then examines the myriad understandings of love in the early period and the underlying controversy regarding the use of the word `ishq to identify precedents for the teachings on `ishq that arose in the early sixth century. Though important treatises on ḥubb, maḥabba and `ishq were penned by philosophers, theologians, poets and literary critics, these are beyond the scope of this study. The extant Sufi treatises from the early period suggest that there was extensive debate regarding the attribution of `ishq to God and the use of the term to define the relationship between God and human beings. While some teachings attributed to al-™all~j (d. 309/922) appear to foreshadow the later Persian tradition and there are allusions to it in several early texts, there are no extant treatises that give to `ishq the centrality it finds in the Saw~niḥ and the later Sufi tradition. This transition towards a full metaphysics of love thus marks a watershed event in the development of Sufi literature.