Layli & Majnun

For its subtlety, inventiveness, and dramatic force, the verse of the twelfth-century Persian poet Nezami has been compared to that of Shakespeare, and in the same way that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has become the archetypal Western love story, so Nezami’s Layli and Majnun occupies an equally uncontested place as the iconic love story of the Middle East. 

The works have many similarities besides their central status in their respective cultures: in both, the lovers are thwarted by their families’ opposition; in both, the heroine’s family chooses another husband for her; in both, the vehemence of the lovers’ emotion wreaks social havoc and leads to their deaths. But where Romeo and Juliet’s love is characterized by its precipitous speed, that of Layli and Majnun lasts a lifetime, and where Shakespeare gives us a blaze of incandescent adolescent passion, Nezami weaves a tale of prolonged absence, ascetic denial, and