Abstract

The author drafts an analysis of the feeling of love in the Abbasid era, as it emerges from an important historical source such as Ibn al-Sā'ī's Gihat al-a'imma al-hulafā' min al- arā'ir wa'l-imā', aiming at giving evidence of the complexity of the Abbasid Caliphs' "love affairs" - as well as their "sexual life" - balancing between "private" and "public". The paper aims at demonstrating the inseparability of love - both heterosexual and homosexual - from the concepts of beauty and power, focusing not only on the description of the Caliphs' "noble women", their physical appearance and their literary skills, but also on a physical representation - in a historical perspective - of the Caliphs themselves.