الحياء في الغزل الأندلسي قيمة مجتمعية واستراتيجية توجيهية - كتاب (نفح الطيب) مثالًا

Abstract

Adherence to moral values has become one of the major challenges of our time. Among these values is modesty, which the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) described as an essential trait of Islam. Through our study of Andalusian literature, we observed that many love poems emphasized the theme of modesty—whether in the beloved, the lover himself, or even in poems directed toward young men. This emphasis stands in contrast to the commonly held image of Andalusian society as being deeply immersed in pleasures and indulgence. Motivated by this observation, we sought to investigate the significance of modesty in love poetry, focusing on its presence in Al-Maqqari’s Nafh al-Tib (d. 1041 AH), one of the most important sources that preserved Andalusian poetry from different eras.Our research revealed that many Andalusian poets-particularly those known for their piety and moral character, such as jurists and judges-highlighted modesty in their verses. By doing so, they affirmed the actual presence of this ethical value within Andalusian society. Furthermore, it appears that they employed modesty as a guiding strategy: portraying it as a fundamental quality of admiration, using it playfully or humorously in flirtation, or presenting the lover’s modesty before God as a means of strengthening self-restraint in the face of temptation.

In this way, poetry functioned as an indirect call for society to embrace modesty as a moral value. Poets subtly drew the audience’s attention to this virtue, either by explicitly mentioning modesty or by evoking its signs through body language and facial expressions. This study concludes that such an approach represents a successful model—one that can be followed in the modern era to preserve and uphold noble moral values.