Histoires d'Amour Et de Mort

"Whoever loves passionately remains chaste and dies, dies a martyr". Mugultay (d. 762/1361) bases The Clear and Eloquent on Those Lovers Who Became Martyrs on this apocryphal hadith, which was forged in the 3rd/9th century. It enables him to include in the sphere of Islam a passionate, deadly and profane love for a creature and therefore to transform it into a quest for spiritual perfection under the aegis of gihad. This was a daring thesis and the treatise was censored and banned from sale in the markets of Cairo. In this essay, Monica Balda-Tillier provides a powerful reconstruction of the conceptual framework that led to the writing of Mugultay's treatise. By highlighting the strategies of argument and narrative adopted by the author to defend the martyrdom of love against its detractors, she conducts a meticulous investigation into the contents of a work that led its author to prison.