The Love Death of Mohamad Bin Daoud
Ali Chahrour creates images of poetry and sensuality. The piece «The Love Behind My Eyes» is based on a tragic love story from the 9th century: a legend revolving around a love which remains unfulfilled. A forbidden relationship results in great sorrow, so immense and inconsolable that it ends in death. How many of such stories might there be? Inspired by the fatality of the broken heart and in the languages of dance, Arabic lyrics and Islamic mysticism, Chahrour tells of grief and oppression – but also of the unwavering voice of the heart. «The Love Behind My Eyes» tells an old story about the pain and the protest of a forbidden love, a story no less important today. The following text by Anna Bertram looks back in time and follows the tracks of Mohamad Bin Daoud, the story’s protagonist.
Mesopotamia, 9th century. The city of Baghdad, with its emerging universities, is a thriving metropolis and the heart of the region. This is where young Mohamad Bin Daoud, the son of an Islamic theologist, grows up. Raised by his parents in a rigorous Muslim Orthodox way, he benefits from a comprehensive education. Early on, he writes religious texts and poetry, and, at the young age of 15, he becomes a professor of around four hundred law students. One day, the story goes, Mohamad Bin Daoud falls in love with Mohamed Bin Jamea, a handsome young man from Isfahan. But this (forbidden) love remains unfulfilled, and, legend has it, proves to be fatal for Bin Daoud…
The story around Bin Daoud and Bin Jamea has no distinct origin but is based on narrations and oral tradition. However, it is likely that the author of the tale is Mohamad Bin Daoud himself: In times of medieval Islam, when science and literature flourished on the Arabian Peninsula, the young legal scholar also wrote poems and texts as it was common for young, educated men at the time. In his collected writings, «Kitāb al-Zahrah» (The Book of the Flower), we find numerous sensual love poems. 109 of which form a cycle called «baʿḍ ahl hādhā al-ʿaṣr» (A Man of Our Times) and tell about the passion of two men whose names, however, remain unknown. The cycle’s poetic language thrives on its eroticism and tenderness.
Moreover, the poems suggest autobiographic leanings. Over the years and centuries, the tale continued to be expanded and amended – by whom remains unknown to this day. Through the continuous expansion, the story has not only stayed alive but has also become a myth. The themes of the writings create the framework of the legend, as well as the tragic end of the love story between Bin Daoud and Bin Jamea: The former suddenly and inexplicably falls ill and dies of a mysterious malady at a young age. Even though the exact cause of death is unknown, Bin Daoud makes a confession to his teacher Niftawayh on his deathbed: He was dying from a broken heart because of his forbidden love to a man.
Bin Daoud’s fate has been discussed controversially to this day. His emotional confession is unique in the Islamic theology and casts a light on the relationship between two men in (medieval) Islam. The traditional interpretation has always denied that the tale was an actual love story. The metaphorical and ornate Arabic language of the ghazal, in which the lyrics were written, leaves a big scope for interpretation – mostly aiming for an intellectual, purely platonic relationship between two educated men. It is regarded a brotherhood. Whereas current positions within and outside the Arabic culture believe to find indications to a homo-erotic interpretation of the Islamic theology by Bin Daoud. In this version, feelings are allowed but the acting out thereof is strictly forbidden in the religious environment at that time.
The myth of the lovers Bin Daoud and Bin Jamea can never be truthfully checked for historical facts. We also do not know who Bin Jamea was and if he reciprocated Bin Daoud’s love. Did he know about it at all? Did love remain a painful thought Bin Daoud could only live out on paper? At this point, art is capable of what science is not: to trace the various truth claims with imagination and fantasy and to develop the stories further. Ali Chahrour’s adaptation of the mysterious tale around Bin Daoud allows us to question the story from our present, to investigate taboos and to point out how deviations from accepted standards, unfortunately, continue to be dangerous. Translated into body language and a visual experience, Chahrour further expands and updates the legend, turning «The Love Behind My Eyes» into a metaphor for the subversive potential of language and imagination.
Ali Chahrour performs «The Love Behind My Eyes» from 19 - 21 August 2022 at the Rote Fabrik. Further information
