Encyclopedia of Islam

Majnun and Layla

 

Qays ibn al-Mulawwah, the “most famous of 

the famous” lovers, is a renowned ancient a

rab

poet. Qays is also known by his nom de plume, 

Majnun, which means “the mad one” or “the one 

possessed.” He was born in the Hijaz region of the 

Arabian Peninsula (in modern-day s

aUdi

 a

rabia

) 

during the latter half of the seventh century. Maj-

nun is both a famous poet and a character in the 

Arabic romance associated with his name, namely, 

the Udhri love story of Majnun Layla. His life and 

love poetry are most fully recorded in a 10th-cen-

tury multivolume work titled Kitab al-Aghani, or 

Book of Songs, produced by a Baghdadi courtier 

named Abu l-Faraj al-Isfahani.

There are several accounts of how Majnun and 

his beautiful beloved, named Layla bint al-Harish, 

fell in love, but the most oft-quoted one is that 

they fell in love when they were 

children

 while 

tending to the flocks of their kin. What happens 

next between these two star-struck young people 

is legendary in the Islamic world. After a brief 

period of courtship between them, during which 

Majnun publicly serenades her and publicly recites 

what was then considered to be risqué poetry 

about his relation with the flirtatious Layla, her 

family veils her and bars him from seeing her. 

Afraid that he might lose her, Majnun then asks 

for her hand in marriage, but he is flatly refused 

by her father. After being summarily rejected, Maj-

nun, despite numerous attempts by his kin to help 

him, becomes somewhat deranged and emotion-

ally unstable. The biographical accounts describe 

how he starts to madly and aimlessly wander about 

and live with the beasts in the desert; at times, he 

wanders as far as the boundaries to s

yria

 or y

emen

.

Even after Layla is married to a wealthy man from 

another tribe, Majnun continues nostalgically to 

recall his beloved through his poetry. In the end, 

Majnun dies in a desert wilderness place remote 

from his tribal shelter and home. Appropriately, he 

is found dead by a fan of his verses who travels to 

Majnun’s clan to hear and collect his poems. The 

burial lament for Majnun is attended by people 

from Layla’s clan, including her father who repents 

his earlier harshness toward the youth.

Rather like a traveling folktale, the romance 

of  Majnun Layla over time has crossed many 

cultural and linguistic boundaries, and it has 

spread throughout the Islamic world. It has been 

composed and recomposed in Persian, Arabic, 

Turkish, and Urdu literatures in the form of 

poetry, romance, and drama, and it has even been 

set to film. It has recently arrived in the West as 

well; in Germany it was made into a symphony 

and “Layla” is also a musical composition of Eric 

Clapton. Through its diffusion, the romance has 

undergone numerous changes, including acquir-

ing new themes and motifs, as well as experi-

encing genre transformations. In the medieval 

Persian literary tradition, two famous authors 

who composed romance narratives celebrating 

these two lovers are Nizami (d. ca. 1217) and Jami 

(d. 1492). Indeed, part of the significance of the 

Majnun Layla romance (alternatively often known 

in non-Arabic literatures as Layla Majnun) is that 

it played an important role in the development of 

chronologically later genres, such as mystical Sufi