Layla and Majnun, the lover driven mad in the Arabian desert

In the Islamic world no couple is as famous as Layla and Majnun. Their story, born among the tribes of Arabia, has been told in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu for more than a thousand years, and the name Majnun has become a byword for the lover who loses all measure. It is often compared to Romeo and Juliet, but it is much older and has an entirely different tone.

A Bedouin poet between history and legend

Arab tradition speaks of Qays ibn al-Mulawwah, of the Banu Amir tribe, who lived in the 7th century under the Umayyads. Love poems were attributed to him for a cousin, Layla, whom his family would not let him marry. Medieval Arab philologists already doubted his historical existence, however, and many verses assigned to him are probably by other authors.

The nickname Majnun literally means possessed by the jinn, that is, mad. In collections of anecdotes such as the Book of Songs by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani in the 10th century, Qays appears as a man who, rejected, abandons society and wanders the desert reciting verses for his beloved. He is the model of udhri love, chaste and faithful to the point of wasting away, associated with the Banu Udhra tribe.

Nizami's poem

The most famous form of the story is the Persian poem composed by Nizami of Ganja in 1188 at the request of the ruler of Shirvan. Nizami turned the scattered anecdotes into a unified narrative. Qays and Layla meet as children at school and fall in love; people's gossip drives her father to keep her shut at home and to reject the suitor.

Layla is given in marriage to another man, Ibn Salam, but remains faithful to her love and never gives herself to her husband. Majnun withdraws to the desert, where he lives among gazelles, deer and lions that protect him like a saint. The two meet rarely and without touching. When Layla dies, Majnun lies down on her grave and dies, and the two are buried together.

Human love and divine love

In the reading of the Sufi mystics, Majnun became the symbol of the soul that loves God to the point of forgetting itself. His detachment from the world, his indifference to the judgement of others and his ability to see Layla in everything were interpreted as stages of the spiritual path. Poets such as Jalal al-Din Rumi and Abd al-Rahman Jami often drew on his example.

After Nizami the story was rewritten many times. Amir Khusraw of Delhi composed a version in 1299, Jami another in the 15th century, and in the 16th century the poet Fuzuli sang it in Turkish in one of the masterpieces of that literature. Persian and Mughal miniatures often depict Majnun, emaciated, surrounded by the animals of the desert.

From the desert to the stage

In 1908 in Baku the Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov presented Leyli and Majnun, considered the first opera of the Muslim world, based on Fuzuli's poem. The legend thus lives on in new forms, from the Caucasus to India, where it has also inspired many films. In India in particular the couple has entered everyday language, and to call someone a Majnun is to say that he is hopelessly in love.

What sets this couple apart from the great European couples is the value placed on renunciation. Layla and Majnun do not run away together and do not openly defy their families: they love from afar, and their faithfulness is measured by their ability to endure separation. In this sense their story is less a drama of passion than a poem of devotion.