Layla and Majnun
Layla and Majnun is an old story of Arab origin, about the 7th-century Arabian poet Qays ibn al-Mulawwah and his lover Layla bint Mahdi.
"The Layla-Majnun theme passed from Arabic to Persian, Turkish, and Indic languages", through the narrative poem composed in 1188 CE 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. 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.
Many imitations have been contrived of Nizami's work, several of which are original literary works in their own right, including Amir Khusrow Dehlavi's Majnun o Leyli, and Jami's version, completed in 1484, amounting to 3,860 couplets. Other notable reworkings are by Maktabi Shirazi, Hatefi, and Fuzuli, which became popular in Ottoman Turkey and India. Sir William Jones published Hatefi's romance in Calcutta in 1788. The popularity of the romance following Nizami's version is also evident from the references to it in lyrical poetry and mystical masnavis—before the appearance of Nizami's romance, there are just some allusions to Layla and Majnun in divans. The number and variety of anecdotes about the lovers also increased considerably from the twelfth century onwards. Mystics contrived many stories about Majnun to illustrate technical mystical concepts such as fanaa, divānagi, self-sacrifice, etc. Nizami's work has been translated into many languages. The modern Arabic-language adaptation of the classical Arabic story include Shawqi's play The Mad Lover of Layla.
Story
Qays ibn al-Mullawah fell in love with Layla al-Aamiriya. He soon began composing poems about his love for her, mentioning her name often. His obsessive effort to woo the girl caused some locals to call him "Majnun", or mentally unhinged. When he asked for her hand in marriage, her father refused because it would be a scandal for Layla to marry someone considered mentally unbalanced. Soon after, Layla was forcibly married to another noble and rich merchant belonging to the Thaqif tribe in Ta'if. He was described as a handsome man with reddish complexion whose name was Ward Althaqafi. The Arabs called him Ward, meaning "rose" in Arabic.When Majnun heard of her marriage, he fled the tribal camp and began wandering the surrounding desert. His family eventually gave up hope for his return and left food for him in the wilderness. He could sometimes be seen reciting poetry to himself or writing in the sand with a stick.
After Majnun went mad, he searched for love in the desert. He is disconnected from the physical world.
Layla is generally depicted as having moved to a place in Northern Arabia with her husband, where she became ill and eventually died. In some versions, Layla dies of heartbreak from not being able to see her beloved. Majnun was later found dead in the wilderness in 688 AD, near Layla's grave. He had carved three verses of poetry on a rock near the grave, which are the last three verses attributed to him.
Many other minor incidents took place between his madness and his death. Most of his recorded poetry was composed before his descent into madness.
It is a tragic story of undying love much like the later Romeo and Juliet. This type of love is known as "virgin love" because the lovers never marry or consummate their passion. Other famous virgin love stories set in Arabia are the stories of Qays and Lubna, Kuthair and Azza, Marwa and Al Majnoun Al Faransi, and Antara and Abla. This literary motif is common throughout the world, notably in the Muslim literature of South Asia, such as Urdu ghazals.
Lineage of Qays and Layla
Layla is the daughter of Qays' cousin. Both Qays and Layla, descended from the tribe of Hawazin and the tribe of Banu Ka'b, which is also related to the direct lineage of Muhammad of Islam. Therefore, they are descendants of Adnan, who is Ishmaelite Arab descendant of, son of Ibrahim. Their lineage is narrated from Arabic records as follows:Qays
Qays' lineage: Qays bin Al-Mulawwah bin Muzahim bin ʿAds bin Rabīʿah bin Jaʿdah bin Ka'b bin Rabīʿah bin ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿa bin Muʿawiyah bin Bakr bin Hawāzin bin Mansūr bin ʿAkramah bin Khaṣfah bin Qays ʿAylān bin Muḍar bin Nizār bin Maʿadd bin ʿAdnan.He is the ʿĀmirī of the Hawāzin.
In Arabic:
قيس بن الملوّح بن مزاحم بن عدس بن ربيعة بن جعدة بن كعب بن ربيعة بن عامر بن صعصعة بن معاوية بن بكر بن هوازن بن منصور بن عكرمة بن خصفة بن قيس عيلان بن مضر بن نزار بن معد بن عدنان
Qays was born around 645 AD in the Najd and died around 688 AD during the reign of the fifth Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan in the 1st century of the Hijri in the Arabian Desert.
Qays is one of the two Al-Qaisayn poets Al-Mutaymīn, the other being Qays bin Dharīḥ, dubbed "Majnūn Lubna ". It is narrated that Qays died in the year 68 AH, found lying dead among stones and his body was carried to his family.
Layla
Layla's lineage: Laylā binti Mahdī bin Saʿd bin Muzahim bin ʿAds bin Rabīʿah bin Jaʿdah bin Ka'b bin Rabīʿah bin Hawāzin bin Mansūr bin ʿAkramah bin Khaṣfah bin Qays ʿAylān bin Muḍar bin Nizār bin Maʿadd bin ʿAdnan.She was called "Umm Mālik ".
In Arabic:
ليلى بنت مهدي بن سعد بن مزاحم بن عدس بن ربيعة بن جعدة بن كعب بن ربيعة بن عامر بن صعصعة بن معاوية بن بكر بن هوازن بن منصور بن عكرمة بن خصفة بن قيس عيلان بن مضر بن نزار بن معد بن عدنان
Layla was born around 648 AD in the Najd, and the date of her death is unknown. She died during the reign of the fifth Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan in the 1st century of the Hijri in the Arabian Desert.
Layla is born four years after Qays in a town called an-Najūʿ in the tribe of Banu Amir. The town is called by her name "Layla" today, and is the capital of Al-Aflaj province in the Riyadh Region in Saudi Arabia.
Location
It is believed from Arab oral tradition that Qays and Layla were born in what is now the province of Al-Aflaj in Saudi Arabia, and where the town of "Layla" has existed.Jabal Al-Toubad is located in the city of Al-Aflaj, 350 km southwest of the city of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Jabbar is located near the village of Al-Ghayl, in the center of Wadi Al-Mughal. This hill witnessed the love story of Qais bin al-Mulawwah and his cousin Laila al-Amiriya, in the 65th year of the Hijri during the reign of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik bin Marwan.
The Persian poet Nasir Khusraw visited the town of "Layla" in the 5th century AH and described the town accurately along with the hill Jabal Al-Toubad, and elaborated on the misery that it had turned into as he spent a few months there. The region was overwhelmed by poverty, internal strife and insecurity.
History and influence
Persian adaptation and Persian literature
The story of Layla and Majnun was known in Persia as early as the 9th century. Two well known Persian poets, Rudaki and Baba Taher, both mention the lovers.Although the story was known in Arabic literature in the 5th century, it was the Persian masterpiece of Nizami Ganjavi that popularized it dramatically in Persian literature. 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. Other influences include older Persian epics, such as Vāmiq u 'Adhrā, written in the 11th century, which covers a similar topic of a virgin and her passionate lover; the latter having to go through many trials to be with his love.
In his adaptation, the young lovers become acquainted at school and fell desperately in love. However, they could not see each other due to a family feud, and Layla's family arranged for her to marry another man. According to Dr. Rudolf Gelpke, "Many later poets have imitated Nizami's work, even if they could not equal and certainly not surpass it; Persians, Turks, Indians, to name only the most important ones. The Persian scholar Hekmat has listed no less than forty Persians and thirteen Turkish versions of Layli and Majnun." According to Vahid Dastgerdi, "If one would search all existing libraries, one would probably find more than 1000 versions of Layli and Majnun."
In his statistical survey of famous Persian romances, Ḥasan Ḏulfaqāri enumerates 59 'imitations' of Layla and Majnun as the most popular romance in the Iranian world, followed by 51 versions of Ḵosrow o Širin, 22 variants of Yusuf o Zuleikha and 16 versions of Vāmiq u ʿAḏhrā.
Azerbaijani adaptation and Azerbaijani literature
The story of Layla and Majnun was introduced to Azerbaijani literature through Fuzuli's interpretation in his lyric poem Leyli and Majnun, written in 1535. This interpretation of the story generated more interest than previous Arabic and Persian versions, which the Turkish literature scholar İskender Pala attributes to the sincerity and lyricism of the poet's expression. The work has been described by the Encyclopædia Iranica as "the culmination of the Turk masnavi tradition in that it raised the personal and human love-tragedy to the plane of mystical longing and ethereal aspiration". Through his interpretation, the story of Layla and Majnun became widely known and Fuzuli's poem is considered one of the greatest works of Turkic literature.The first opera in the Islamic world, Leyli and Majnun, was composed by the Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov in 1908 and based on Fuzuli's work of the same name.