AbstractA resilient pattern of early Arabic discourse depicts love as a statement of conflict between passion and rules of reasonable and socially approved behaviour. The antagonism is surmounted by sublime love replacing the initial aspiration in the course of a process of refinement. The resulting contradictive stance – emotional attachment becoming even more intense as the beloved is absented by adverse circumstance – inspires intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual experience, as it is valid for profane relationship and for divine love. The work of Dāʾūd al-Anṭākī (d. 1599) is discussed here to demonstrate that Arabic tradition, in contrast to European notions of sensitivity, increasingly concentrated on the expression of aesthetic and spiritual experience to the detriment of depictions of conflict setting the individual against social rules and norms. In his late and widespread compendium, the author, famous physician and practical philosopher, analyses the discourse on love. Displaying a rationalist, non-idealistic, down-to-earth attitude, he pursues a critical interest in the manifestations of love. By correlating profane love to the mystic’s love of God, he directs attention towards the sublime expression of longing, fear and ecstasy of fulfilment which is in his view the true signification of love and the justification for its persisting representation in literature.