Amorous or scientific metaphors? Abu Nuwas, the beginning of the end of the Aristotelian cosmos, and an incoherence of al-Nazzam

The paper explores the relationship between two major representatives of intellectual life in ninth century Baghdad, Abū Nuwās and the theologian Ibrāhīm al-Naẓẓām. The literary evidence of this relationship sheds a light on the reception by poetic language of the intellectual stimuli that came from spheres of knowledge apparently different from one another, and the ability to absorb the innovative contents that were rising to the forefront of the intellectual debate of the time. Actually, Abū Nuwās seems to adopt metaphors originating from this debate that, in contemporary Baghdad, exceeded the boundary of theology to border on the physics of kalām, elaborating them both within his poetic discourse on love.