By Supriya Savkoor
Long before Romeo and Juliet, there was Laila and Majnu,
the ultimate star-crossed lovers who generations of Middle Eastern, Asian, and African
cultures celebrated through poetry, plays, art, and later film.
The original story is based on a real event, about a
Bedouin shepherd named Qays (or Qais) ibn al-Mulawwah back in the 7th
century. Qays fell in love with Laila (or Layla) bint Mahdi ibn Sa’d, a young
girl from his tribe, and wrote many poems about his undying love for her.
However, when Qays asked Laila’s father for her hand in marriage, he was
refused, and soon, Laila was married off to another man and moved away. Qays became
devastated and left home to wander the wilderness and deserts where he
continued to compose poetry but quickly descended into madness. He thus earned
the nickname Majnun or Majnu, meaning mad or crazy.
Qays’s
poetry and the Arab stories about him and his love were already popular and well known in the region during those
times and were told and retold many times over the centuries until the great
Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi wrote what became the masterpiece version. Ganjavi,
who coincidentally first wrote a famous epic poem about Farhad and Shireen, the star-crossed lovers Heidi wrote about, researched both secular and
mystical sources about Laila and Majnun and used techniques from the
Persian tradition of poetry to make the tragic love story more vivid, boosting its popularity immensely.
After Ganjavi’s version came out – three centuries before
Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet – the
story of Laila and Majnun spread like wildfire through Azerbaijan, Turkey, and
eventually to India, where it’s still considered the penultimate story of
star-crossed lovers.
Take a look at some of the art this famous couple inspired.
From Mashhad, Iran, Majnun eavesdrops on Layla's camp |
An Afghani rendering of the young lovers |
A Tajik miniature painting shows Layla and Majnu as young classmates |
A tapestry from Mughal India shows a desolate Majnu out in the wilderness |
From a modern Malaysian performance |
The story is so entrenched, so much a part of the cultures it
spread to, the term Majnun or Majnu is commonly used in the Middle East, Central
and South Asia, North Africa, even Somalia to describe anyone who is madly in
love, as does the phrase “Laila-Majnu” itself (often describing blushing newlyweds, for example). In Turkey, where Majnun is known as Mecnun, when
someone says they “feel like Mecnun,” it means they feel possessed, often by
love.
It could be said that most popular Bollywood movies retell the Laila and Majnu story in one way or another, but India has made at least a dozen or more films specifically about Laila and Majnu in many languages, including, curiously, Persian, Malay, and Pashtun. The Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov set the story to music and made what is considered to be the Middle East’s first opera, premiering in Baku in 1908. In the 19th century, Isaac D’Israeli (the father of Benjamin D’Israeli, the future British prime minister) translated the epic poem from the Persian into the English, expanding the audience to the west.
Beyond the Indian films, the story has been referenced in
much popular media, including Sufi qawwali poem-songs, bestselling novels by authors Orhan Pamuk and
Khaled Hosseini, the famous Layla
song by Eric Clapton (which even quotes a line from Qays's poetry), and the kitchy disco song Laila from the Indian film Qurbani. The couple
has also been the subject of a Tajik Soviet film-ballet from the 1960s, at least one Iranian film from the
1930s, and a contemporary Yo Yo Ma concert.
Over time, the story has taken on slightly different
retellings. In one recounting, Layla and Majnun were classmates, that Majnun wrote
poems to Layla instead of paying attention to the teacher, and so received
lashings in class. Every time Majnun was beaten, Layla would magically bleed, thus causing her family the consternation that leads to them separating the couple. In another version, Layla’s brother Tabrez protests Majnun’s
love for his sister, and in the midst of their quarrel, Majnun accidentally
kills Tabrez, which incurs the wrath of Layla’s family.
The graves in Bijnore |
Whatever actually happened, fact and fiction have blended to create one of legend and literature's most enduring star-crossed couples.
Wonderful story. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHi you might like this poem Majnun and Layla
ReplyDeletehttps://www.scribd.com/doc/241958342/Majnun-and-Layla-erotic-poetry