There are many words to express “Love” in Arabic and each of them conveys a different stage in the process of falling in love.
- The word ‘hawa’, for example, describes the initial attraction or inclining of the soul or mind towards another.
- ‘Alaaqa’, means ‘to cling on to’ describes the next stage when the heart begins to attach itself to the beloved.
- Before evolving into a blind desire ‘Ishq’ and all-consuming love ‘Shaghaf’.
- The word for heart, ‘qalb’ meaning to flip or turn something over. Although the word refers to the physical heart.
Spiritually the root word becomes appropriate when we think of our hearts as something constantly turning over emotions, decisions, and opinions.
A labor of love
For a lot of us, when we engage in certain activities, it can feel a lot like love. When someone says, “I love hiking,” or, “I love painting,” it’s not so easy to dismiss as simply a turn of phrase. There are some activities that can evoke such passion and can transport you to some special place, Arabic words for Love that we need a word to capture that feeling.
Love is considered to be both positive and negative, with its virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection, as “the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another” and its vice representing human moral flaw, akin to vanity, selfishness, amour propre, and egotism, as potentially leading people into a type of mania, obsessiveness or codependency.
It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, Arabic words for Love one’s self, or animals. In its various forms, love acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts. Love has been postulated to be a function that keeps human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species.
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