The Dove’s Collar “You commissioned me - may God honor you - to compile for you a treatise on the nature of love, its meanings, its causes, and its symptoms, and what happens to it, and to it as a matter of truth, not to add or elaborate, but to provide a source of what it brings to me in its face, and according to its occurrence, where my memorization and breadth of what I remember have ended. So I went to what you wanted, and had it not been for your offer, I would not have bothered with it, for this is nonsense, and it is better for us, despite the shortness of our lives, not to spend them except in what we hope to welcome the turning point, and a good return tomorrow.
And in what you have assigned me, I must mention what my presence witnessed, and my care understood, and the trustworthy people of my time told me, so forgive me for using names, for they are either a private matter that we do not permit revealing, or we maintain in that a friendly friend and a venerable man. It suffices for me to name someone who is not harmed in naming him, and who is named does not cause us any shame in mentioning him, either because he is famous and does not suffice for folding and leaving out explanations; Or because the informant was satisfied with the appearance of his news, and there was little denial on his part of its transmission.
In this letter, I will cite poems that I said in what I saw, so do not deny, you and anyone who sees them, that I follow the path of a narrator who speaks on his own authority, for this is the doctrine of those who adore poetry, and more than that, my brothers force me to speak harshly about what is presented to them based on their methods and doctrines. It is enough for me that I remember what was shown to me that is similar to what I am inclined toward and is attributed to me.”