Layla and Majnun (Arabic: مجنون ليلى majnūn laylā “Layla’s Mad Lover”; Persian: لیلی و مجنون, romanized: laylâ-o-majnun is an old story of Arab origin,about the 7th-century Arabic poet Qays ibn al-Mulawwah and his lover Layla bint Mahdi (later known as Layla al-Aamiriya)
“The Layla-Majnun theme passed from Arabic to Persian, Turkish, and Indian languages”through the narrative poem composed in 584/1188 by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi, as the third part of his Khamsa.It is a popular poem praising their love story.
Qays and Layla fell in love with each other when they were young, but when they grew up, Layla’s father did not allow them to be together. Qays became obsessed with her. His tribe Banu ‘Amir, and the community gave him the epithet of Majnūn (مجنون “crazy”, lit. “possessed by Jinn”). Long before Nizami, the legend circulated in anecdotal forms in Iranian akhbar.
The early anecdotes and oral reports about Majnun are documented in Kitab al-Aghani and Ibn Qutaybah’s Al-Shi’r wa-l-Shu’ara’. The anecdotes are mostly very short, only loosely connected, and show little or no plot development. Nizami collected both secular and mystical sources about Majnun and portrayed a vivid picture of the famous lovers.
Subsequently, many other Persian poets imitated him and wrote their own versions of the romance. Nizami drew influence from Udhrite love poetry, which is characterized by erotic abandon and attraction to the beloved, often by means of an unfulfillable longing.
