Description
The Story of Layla and Majnun
by Nizami
Translated by Rudolf Gelpke
with Zia Inayat Khan and Omid Safi
An English translation of Nizami’s twelfth-century poetic masterpiece, in which he reshapes the legends of Majnun, the quintessential romantic fool, into a tale of the ideal lover, an allegory of the soul’s search for God. Includes a final chapter translated especially for this edition by Omid Safi and Pir Zia Inayat Khan.
Reviews for The Story of Layla and Majnun:
“Among the legendary love stories of the Islamic Orient, that of Layla and Majnun is probably the best known. The two lovers live up to this day in poems, songs and epics of many tribes and nations from the Caucasus to the interior of Africa, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.”
– Rudolph Gelpke, translator
“Layla and Majnun have been characters for Sufi poets, as Krishna was for the poets of India. Majnun means absorption into a thought, and Layla means the night of obscurity. The story is from beginning to end a teaching on the path of devotion, the experience of the soul in the search of God.”
– Hazrat Inayat Khan
Read an excerpt from The Story of Layla and Majnun:
“I have sold my life for love’s sake! Yes it is I: may I always be love’s slave! They tell me: abandon love, that is the path to recovery—but I can gain strength only through love. If love dies, so shall I, My nature is love’s pupil: be my fate nothing, if not love, and woe to the heart incapable of passion. I ask thee, my God, I beseech thee, in all the godliness of thy divine nature and all the perfection of my kingdom: let my love grow stronger, let it endure, even if I perish. Let me drink from this well, let my eye never miss its light. If I am drunk with the wine of love, let me drink even more deeply.”
