Layla and Majnun

Majnun Layla (Arabic: مجنون لیلی‎ Majnun Layla, "Possessed by madness for Layla") also referred to as (Persian: لیلی و مجنون‎ Leyli o Majnun, "The Madman and Layla" in Persian) is a love story from the Middle East, later adopted and popularized by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi. It is the third of his five long narrative poems, Khamsa (the Quintet).

Qays and Layla fall in love with each other when they are in grade school, but when they grow up Leyla’s father doesn't allow them to be together. Qays becomes crazy about her and that's why he's later given the name Majnun (مجنون, lit. "possessed") in his community. The epithet given to the semi-historical character Qays ibn al-Mulawwah of the Banu 'Amir tribe. Long before Nizami, the legend circulated in anecdotal forms in Arabic akhbar. The early anecdotes and oral reports about Majnun are documented in Kitab al-Aghani and Ibn Qutaybah's al-Shi'r wal-Shu'ara'. The anecdotes are mostly very short, only loosely connected, and show little or no plot development.

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 (completed in 1299), and Jami's version, completed in 1484, amounts to 3,860 couplets. Two other notable imitations are by Maktabi Shirazi and Hatefi (d. 1520), 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 mathnavis—before the appearance of Nizami's romance, there are just some allusions to Leyli 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 (annihilation), divānagi (love-madness), self-sacrifice, etc. Nizami's work has been translated into many languages.