In the Arab world during the Middle Ages, physicians were already contemplating the “illness of love.” For them, loving without reciprocity (or the absence of love) and the despair it produced constituted a distinct disease, affecting both body and mind. How could researchers have arrived at such a conclusion?
A distinct mental and physical illness
In Antiquity, Greek theories linked the illness of love to a form of melancholy. Yet, the Islamic world of the Middle Ages subsequently developed its own nosological and clinical approach. For the physicians of the time, the mal d’amour (in Arabic “ishq”) was a truly distinct mental and physical disease. This premise was discussed in a work titled Science and Religion in Mamluk Egypt: Ibn al-Nafīs, Pulmonary Transit and Bodily Resurrection (2013), by historian Nahyan Fancy from the University of Exeter (United Kingdom).
“Nahyan Fancy examined the writings of key physicians of the medieval Islamic world, engaging them in dialogue with the works of philosophers, literary scholars, religious polemicists, and theologians to demonstrate the interconnections among these traditions.”, one reads in a press release highlighting these works in July 2026.
The evolution of theories over time
The historian affirmed that the Islamic medical tradition considered a very strong link between mental health and the body. Scholars like Ibn Sina (Avicenna) notably described physical alterations – weakness, changes in pulse – that could be caused by the illness of love. In the thirteenth century, the physician Ibn al-Nafis theorized that this illness arose from an accumulation of seminal fluid, thus attempting to explain why single men – or those morally strict – were particularly vulnerable to the mal d’amour.
However, Nahyan Fancy stressed an important evolution when studying the writings of the Ottoman physician Ibn al-Mubārak dating from the sixteenth century. While legitimate sexual relations were prescribed as the standard remedy for ordinary people, the mal d’amour among prophets and saints did not come with any carnal desire (a duty of chastity). Their deep distress originated from contemplating the “perfect beauty of the beloved,” that is, God. Thus, this transformed the illness into a proof of moral and spiritual perfection.
Love sickness and “humors”
While the medieval Islamic world thus detached itself from inherited Greek theories, inquiries appeared elsewhere as well. Notably, Mary M. Alcaro, an American researcher and visiting professor of English literature at Bryn Mawr College (United States). In February 2026, she published an article in the journal Synapsis, in which she reminded readers that in Europe, physicians advised balancing the “humors.”
At the time, the term “humors” referred to the four types of bodily fluids in the human body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. It was believed that an excess (or a deficiency) of a fluid would disrupt the body, causing a “hyperstimulation of the brain” and thus behavioral and/or personality disorders. Accordingly, the illness of love was considered among the disorders arising from this disruption of the “humors.”
Gradually, advances in medicine and the rise of romantic literature ended these scientific notions about the illness of love. Over time, it became the primary source of inspiration for fiction, used to explore human emotions through stories of passion, grief, and melancholy.
