Ishq

Ishq () is an Arabic word meaning 'love' or 'passion', also widely used in other languages of the Muslim world.

The word ishq does not appear in the central religious text of Islam, the Quran, which instead uses derivatives of the verbal root ' (), such as the noun ' (). The word is traditionally derived from the verbal root ' "to stick, to cleave to" and connected to the noun ', which denotes a kind of ivy. In its most common classical interpretation, ishq refers to the irresistible desire to obtain possession of the beloved (ma‘shūq), expressing a deficiency that the lover (‘āshiq) must remedy in order to reach perfection (kamāl). Like the perfections of the soul and the body, love thus admits of hierarchical degrees, but its underlying reality is the aspiration to the beauty (al-husn) which God manifested in the world when he created Adam in his own image. The Islamic conception of love acquired further dimensions from the Greek-influenced view that the notions of Beauty, Good, and Truth (al-haqq) "go back to one indissoluble Unity (wahda)".