Layla and Majnun

Author: Nẓāmī Ganjavi; Traditional Persian

Time Period: 1001 CE–1500 CE

Country or Culture: Iraq; Iran

Genre: Legend

Overview

A story of obsession taken to extremes, Layla and Majnun, which is also known as Leyli and Majnum, demonstrates both the constructive and destructive power of passionate—though unrequited—love. Based on actual people and events from the seventh century, the legend has become a seemingly immortal tragic love story. It was first passed along orally before being written down several hundred years later and becoming adapted and referenced in songs, literature, and dramatic productions worldwide.

According to legend, in the late seventh century CE, a young bedouin boy named Kais ibn al-Mulawwah from the Banu Amir confederation of tribes in northern Arabia fell helplessly in love with his young cousin from the same tribe. She was named Layla (alternatively spelled Leila, Lili, or Leyli) bint Mahdi ibn Sa’ad (also known as Layla Al-Aamiriya), who was equally in love with Kais. Consumed, Kais could do nothing but think and talk endlessly about her attributes, whisper her name at every opportunity, and write eloquent, love-inspired poems about her. From his fixation, he acquired the nickname Majnun (meaning “the madman” or “the possessed one”) among friends. When Kais asked to marry Layla, her father refused since it would demean the family name and reputation to be associated with a crazy person. Thwarted, Majnun fled into the desert to live as a hermit, subsisting on grass and roots, communing with animals, and endlessly composing poems to his beloved, which were so brilliant that passersby committed them to memory. In his absence, Layla’s father arranged for her to marry a wealthy and important man. Pining silently and in secret for her lost love, Layla refused to consummate the marriage. Ultimately, Layla’s husband died, and the stress of her heartbreak at being unable to be with her true love eventually leads to Layla’s death. After learning of her death, Majnun kept a vigil at her gravesite, where he also eventually perished.

Young Kais . . . was drowning in a sea of love before he even / knew what love was. He had given his heart to the girl / before he had even realised what it was that he was / giving away. Layla, for her part, fared no better, for she, / too, had fallen. A fire had been lit in both their hearts, / one reflecting the other.

Layla and Majnun

In the twelfth century, poet Nẓāmī (ca. 1141–1209), who was known as Nẓāmī Ganjavi because he hailed from Ganja, a community now in Azerbaijan, accepted a commission from the regional Islamic Shirvanshah regime to write a Persian-language epic romance about the ill-fated couple. Nẓāmī greatly expanded upon the legend to produce a coherent, well-wrought narrative. The poet added new characters, created fresh incidents, and inserted parables and proverbs from local folklore. In making his work meaningful to his royal audience, he transformed the setting from a simple nomadic community to a culturally refined, courtly environment. Nẓāmī broadened the appeal of his work by infusing culturally relevant themes and symbolism and by incorporating chivalric imagery. He also included references to the Qur’an and utilized motifs from Neoplatonism and Sufi mysticism. The imaginative result was a long, narrative poem of timeless power and evocative beauty. His Layla and Majnun appeared in 1188 in his collection titled Khamsa (Quintet) and was the centerpiece among five epic works that included a philosophical tract (Mazkhan al Asrar; in English, The Treasury of Mysteries) and three additional lengthy romances: Khosrov and Shirin, Haft Paykar (The Seven Beauties), and Iskander-nameh (The Book of Alexander).

Nẓāmī’s version of Layla and Majnun was considered a masterpiece and was subsequently translated into dozens of languages in both poetic and prose forms. Nẓāmī’s superior and original version of the legend spawned countless retellings of the story, which over the centuries has been commemorated in verse, music, drama, and art.

Summary

Incidents from the legend of Layla and Majnun were recounted in bazaars beginning in the seventh century, and the story was disseminated throughout the Middle East and beyond. Fragments of the legend appeared in print in the ninth century. Ibn Qutaybah (828–89) published a brief account in Introduction to the Book of Poetry and Poets. In the tenth century, Abu al-Faraj al-Isbahani (897–967) collected poems allegedly written to Layla by love-crazed Majnun as well as other verses about the tragic couple for his Kitab al-aghani (Book of Songs), which is a compilation of ancient songs and poems with biographical information on the composers and poets.

Nẓāmī, who historians believe was a broadly educated individual, may have used Introduction to the Book of Poetry and Poets and Book of Songs as references when gathering information for Layla and Majnun. As an intellectual, the poet would have been familiar with major Islamic interpretations of Platonic thought, including those of al-Kindi (ca. 801–73), al-Farabi (ca. 872–950), Ibn Sina (ca. 980–1037), and al-Ghazali (1058–1111). Because of extensive the Islamic influence throughout Western Europe and India, it is likely Nẓāmī would have also been steeped in ancient literature from regions under Islamic control. For instance, the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid had all been translated into many languages and were widely available by Nẓāmī’s time. He was probably also aware of medieval epics and their focus on the principles of chivalry and courtly love. The rise of troubadours and minstrels between the mid-twelfth and early thirteenth century and the associated spread of printed literature undoubtedly exposed Nẓāmī to contemporary epics. These might have included works on Arthurian legends such as the Annales Cambriae (The Annals of Wales), Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons), Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, and Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot, le Chevalier de la Charrette (Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart), which were all published before Layla and Majnun. Likewise, the French epic Song of Roland and the Spanish epic El Cid—both centered around the Muslim presence in Europe—and a Persian epic from neighboring Georgia, The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, were all in print by the mid-twelfth century.

Regardless of the sources used for inspiration, Nẓāmī in his epic poetry demonstrated command of many medieval fields of study such as botany, astronomy and astrology, law, history, music, art, and theology. He drew upon this diverse knowledge in writing Layla and Majnun. In the process, Nẓāmī created a multifaceted work that is several things at once. While certainly the legend is a classical romance of human desire, it is also a courtly epic of chaste longing. It is on the one hand a pioneering psychological study of the causes and effects of strong emotions while simultaneously providing a mystical account of the spiritual journey true believers must undertake on the path to divine love and the trials they must overcome in reaching the ultimate quest of unity with the Supreme Being.

The legend of Layla and Majnun was conceived in the structure of a qasida, a three-part pre-Islamic form of Arabic lyric poetry of strict meter in which every line rhymes. The typical subject of a qasida was the search for one’s beloved. In the opening stanzas, the poet typically reminiscences about past joys while he mourns a lover’s absence. In the second part of the poem, the writer chases after the object of desire through the wilderness, and in the final part, the moral of the story is revealed. Though Nẓāmī loosely retained the qasida form as a framework for Layla and Majnun, he employed the more modern masnavi or mathnawi format, which incorporates a regular meter similar to iambic pentameter in couplets featuring internal rhyme in the original Persian text. Variant versions of the poem suggest Nẓāmī reworked Layla and Majnun after its initial publication, and anonymous contributors may have also added lines to the original. Scholars believe that the most authoritative versions contain from 4,600 to 4,800 lines of Nẓāmī’s verse. Because of the meter and complex rhyme scheme (which are difficult to maintain in other languages) and to differentiate between Nẓāmī’s narrative and the impassioned poetry attributed to the character of Majnun, many translations present the main story in prose and divided into chapters. Oftentimes, translators will highlight particularly enlightening verses throughout.

The legend opens in conventional epic fashion by setting the location, introducing major characters, and hinting at the purpose of the story. Readers learn of the longing of an Arab bedouin leader—in Nẓāmī’s version a wealthy sultan rather than merely a humble tribal chief—for a son and heir to carry on the family name. His prayers are answered, and a beautiful boy is born who the sultan names Kais (meaning “firm” or “bold”). Soon Kais is enrolled in school where he meets Layla (whose name means “night”). The two children are immediately infatuated with one another. Layla basks silently in her ardor, while Kais externalizes his love in verse, which causes him to acquire the nickname Majnun (“the madman”). When Kais’s father, hoping to cure his son’s love-sickness, approaches Layla’s father to arrange a marriage between their children, he is firmly rebuffed. In despair at being forever deprived of Layla’s love, Majnun runs off into the desert to attempt to come to grips with his hopeless situation.

The bulk of Layla and Majnun—told in dramatic fashion in a narrative filled with creative metaphors, similes, analogies, allusions, and other rhetorical devices—concerns the two major characters’ physical, mental, and emotional reactions to thwarted love. Layla suffers in silence, as befits her position in a society that did not treat women as equals. Majnun, though free, is a prisoner of his own sensitivity, and he descends further into madness. He resists efforts of well-meaning family members and acquaintances to reason with him. He half-heartedly participates in a series of attempts—including bloody battles with Layla’s tribe—intended to resolve the central issue, which becomes further clouded when Layla becomes the wife of a noble in an arranged marriage but stoutly refuses to consummate it with her husband. Ultimately, though he remains focused on Layla as love-object, Majnun transforms. Through suffering, his ego is lost. The vacuum of Majnun’s soul becomes filled with spiritual love as he becomes reconciled to his fate and draws closer to understanding —and accepting—the will of God.

While Layla and Majnun is at heart a tragedy in which the title characters and many others die in the course of the story, Nẓāmī attached a final chapter to provide a happy ending and lighten the downbeat mood of the narrative. In a minor character’s dream, Layla and Majnun are envisioned together in paradise for eternity, free from suffering.

Bibliography

Capellanus, Andreas, and Jan M. Ziolkowski, eds. The Art of Courtly Love. New York: Columbia UP, 2009. Print.

De Charny, Geoffroi. A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry. Trans. Elspeth Kennedy. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2005. Print.

Jackson-Laufer, Guida M. Traditional Epics: A Literary Companion. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.

Khairallah, As’ad E. Love, Madness, and Poetry: An Interpretation of the Majnun Legend. Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag, 1980. Print.

Maalouf, Amin. The Crusades through Arab Eyes. London: Saqi, 2006. Print.

Nẓāmī. Layla and Majnun. Adapt. Colin Turner. London: Blake, 1997. Print.

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