Lord Kitchener that conquered the Mahdist state
in 1898. Even in defeat, the Mahdists retained
widespread popularity. Their descendants formed
the Ansar party that pushed for Sudanese inde-
pendence in the 1950s.
Further reading: Richard A. Bermann, The Mahdi of
Allah (New York: MacMillan, 1932); P. M. Holt, The
Mahdist State in the Sudan (London: Oxford University
Press, 1958); Rudolf C. Slatin Pasha, Fire and Sword in
the Sudan: A Personal Narrative of Fighting and Serv-
ing the Dervishes, 1879–1895. Translated by Major F.
R. Wingate (London: Edward Arnold, 1896); Haim
Shaked, The Life of the Sudanese Mahdi (New Bruns-
wick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978).
Makka See mecca.
Majnun and Layla
Qays ibn al-Mulawwah, the “most famous of
the famous” lovers, is a renowned ancient arab
poet. Qays is also known by his nom de plume,
Majnun, which means “the mad one” or “the one
possessed.” He was born in the Hijaz region of the
Arabian Peninsula (in modern-day saUdi arabia)
during the latter half of the seventh century. Maj-
nun is both a famous poet and a character in the
Arabic romance associated with his name, namely,
the Udhri love story of Majnun Layla. His life and
love poetry are most fully recorded in a 10th-cen-
tury multivolume work titled Kitab al-Aghani, or
Book of Songs, produced by a Baghdadi courtier
named Abu l-Faraj al-Isfahani.
There are several accounts of how Majnun and
his beautiful beloved, named Layla bint al-Harish,
fell in love, but the most oft-quoted one is that
they fell in love when they were children while
tending to the flocks of their kin. What happens
next between these two star-struck young people
is legendary in the Islamic world. After a brief
period of courtship between them, during which
Majnun publicly serenades her and publicly recites
what was then considered to be risqué poetry
about his relation with the flirtatious Layla, her
family veils her and bars him from seeing her.
Afraid that he might lose her, Majnun then asks
for her hand in marriage, but he is flatly refused
by her father. After being summarily rejected, Maj-
nun, despite numerous attempts by his kin to help
him, becomes somewhat deranged and emotion-
ally unstable. The biographical accounts describe
how he starts to madly and aimlessly wander about
and live with the beasts in the desert; at times, he
wanders as far as the boundaries to syria or yemen.
Even after Layla is married to a wealthy man from
another tribe, Majnun continues nostalgically to
recall his beloved through his poetry. In the end,
Majnun dies in a desert wilderness place remote
from his tribal shelter and home. Appropriately, he
is found dead by a fan of his verses who travels to
Majnun’s clan to hear and collect his poems. The
burial lament for Majnun is attended by people
from Layla’s clan, including her father who repents
his earlier harshness toward the youth.
Rather like a traveling folktale, the romance
of Majnun Layla over time has crossed many
cultural and linguistic boundaries, and it has
spread throughout the Islamic world. It has been
composed and recomposed in Persian, Arabic,
Turkish, and Urdu literatures in the form of
poetry, romance, and drama, and it has even been
set to film. It has recently arrived in the West as
well; in Germany it was made into a symphony
and “Layla” is also a musical composition of Eric
Clapton. Through its diffusion, the romance has
undergone numerous changes, including acquir-
ing new themes and motifs, as well as experi-
encing genre transformations. In the medieval
Persian literary tradition, two famous authors
who composed romance narratives celebrating
these two lovers are Nizami (d. ca. 1217) and Jami
(d. 1492). Indeed, part of the significance of the
Majnun Layla romance (alternatively often known
in non-Arabic literatures as Layla Majnun) is that
it played an important role in the development of
chronologically later genres, such as mystical SufiMajnun and Layla 449 J