The universal story of Leylâ and Majnûn has been told down the ages in legends, novels, poems, films, songs in Arabic, Kurdish, Pashtu, Hindi, Urdu and Bengali. It’s a story of absolute love, a veritable mystical quest.

A scene from Nezami's adaptation of the story. Layla and Majnun meet for the last time before their deaths. Both have fainted and Majnun's elderly messenger attempts to revive Layla while wild animals protect the pair from unwelcome intruders. Late 16th century illustration.

Leylâ and Majnûn is a well-known and well-loved story from Islamic culture. In the Arab tradition, which inspired the Persians and then the Turks over the centuries, the history of this narrative plot is one of scattered fragments, of anecdotes that were passed on according to the custom, and that validated its history.

Majnûn had it all – beauty, intelligence, prestige and riches, as well as the gift of poetry, the very crucible of love. His banishment and not being allowed to see or speak to Leylâ pushed him over the edge into madness. Removed from any semblance of a normal social life, he decamped to the desert, stopped clothing himself or eating, and lived in harmony with the animals, in particular the gazelles. Wandering in the void, he remembered his loved one, filling his solitude with poetry.

The plot tells the tale from the moment when Majnûn and Leylâ fall in love, to the death of Leylâ and then that of Majnûn himself.