Leyla ile Mecnun (Leyla and Mejnun)

Leyla ile Mecnun is the mesnevi, a long narrative poem in rhyming couplets, that Fuzuli wrote in 1535. In a typeset text based on the edition of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism it runs to 3098 couplets. I give couplet numbers and headings according to that text; in other editions the numbers may shift.

Dates given for Fuzuli's birth range from 1480 to 1494. He died in 1556, in Baghdad or Karbala. The Divan, the Su Kasidesi (Ode to Water), Hadikatü's-Süeda and Şikayetname are also his works; Leyla ile Mecnun is the story-telling mesnevi on that list.

As for Turkish editions: bookshop listings show a large number of editions, with page counts ranging from eighty to three hundred and fifty-two. I could not confirm from the pages which are the full text and which are simplified versions; I am writing about it under its original title.

The story existed before Fuzuli

The story of Kays and Leyla comes from Arab sources. Nizami wrote a Persian Leyla and Mecnun in 1181, Jami changed the ending in the sixth book of his Haft Awrang, and Amir Khusrau Dehlavi rewrote the story in his own Majnun u Layla.

Fuzuli enters this crowd late, and he knows it. According to the text, the people who ask him for the story remind him that there are many versions of it among the Persians and none among the Turks. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam lists these poets as Taşlıcalı Yahya Bey, Hayali Bey, Celalzade Mustafa Çelebi and Üsküdarlı Aşki, who took part in Suleiman the Magnificent's campaign to Baghdad. According to the same entry, Fuzuli treats the request as a test, finishes the work in a short time, and changes motifs while taking Nizami as his model: Leyla is no longer Kays's relative.

He presents the mesnevi to Veys Pasha, the governor of Baghdad; the text says this plainly. Some sources write the governor's name as Süleymani Pasha, and they also give the year of writing variously as 1533, 1535 and 1536. I kept the name the text gives and TDV's 1535.

The sixth before the story

The actual narrative begins around couplet 477. Before it come a prose preface (dibace), a tevhid praising God's oneness, a münacat (a prayer), kasides, a miraciyye on the Prophet's ascension, a naat praising the Prophet, praise of Suleiman, the reason the work was written and praise of the governor. Close to a sixth of the couplets pass at the door.

The preface is a declaration of intent: the story is a pretext, the truth is what is meant to be said. Leyla is the name of the secret behind the veil, Mecnun the soul wandering in the desert of heedlessness. Still, the TDV entry says that even if Sufi readings are made, a realistic love dominates the weave of the story.

Fuzuli is aware of how hard the task is: the story begins in grief and ends in nothingness, there is no joy in its wine and no gladness in its tune. He scatters more than twenty gazels and murabbas through it. Every scene opens with a rhyming two-part heading: this is that, and this is that. You can draw out the skeleton of the story just by reading the headings. The pen name Fuzuli appears in the last couplet of the gazels, so while Leyla or Mecnun is speaking, the poet's signature steps in.

School, spring, the name Mecnun

Kays's father is a childless Arab chieftain. He waits with vows, and one night his prayer is answered. Fuzuli's baby starts crying the moment he is born and says he has come into the world to be grief's rival.

At ten he has his circumcision feast and is sent to school. There are girls and boys on the benches, and Leyla is there too. Kays pretends not to understand the lesson and asks her for help, writes letters wrong on purpose so that Leyla will smile and correct them, and writes the two letters in Leyla's name over and over in his notebook.

When the gossip spreads, Leyla's mother scolds her daughter. Leyla says, crying, that she does not know what love is. Her mother believes her but keeps her at home. At school Kays sees an empty seat.

Then spring comes. His friends tell him it is the season of joy, that he should stop grieving and go out into the open country. Mecnun goes, but he wanders around telling his trouble to the tulip, the narcissus, the violet, the nightingale. His path leads to where Leyla is walking with the girls, and when the two lovers meet, both of them faint. From that day on Kays is known as Mecnun. He tears his collar, leaves his shoes behind, says goodbye to his friends with "do not come near me" and goes out into the desert.

Father, the Kaaba, the gazelle

The father finds his son in the desert. He reminds him of the inheritance of Arab chieftainship, and the mother repeats the same advice in other words. When this does not work either, the father goes to ask for Leyla's hand. The answer is polite and veiled: people call your son Mecnun, I cannot give my daughter to him, but if he comes to his senses we will see. Since Mecnun is not someone who will be cured by reason, I think this condition is the polite way of closing the door.

The father looks for a remedy at the Kaaba. In front of the Kaaba Mecnun does not ask for healing; he asks for more love to fall into his heart. Then he goes back to the desert, frees a gazelle from a hunter's trap by giving away everything he has, and shares his trouble with a dove.

Leyla's side

Close to two hundred couplets take place in Leyla's room. She pours out her heart to the candle, tells her secret to the moth, quarrels with the moon, sends word with the wind, goes out to the garden in spring, talks to the cloud. Each of these is a separate scene with its own heading. Her first gazel about separation is also sung here, while she is shut up at home.

Then Ibn-i Selam, out hunting with his falcon, falls for her, sends plenty of wealth with an envoy, and the family agrees. Leyla mourns.

Nevfel, the chain, the lie about the jinn

A just man who sees Mecnun in the desert, Nevfel, promises to help and marches with his army on Leyla's tribe. Mecnun, meanwhile, prays during the battle for Leyla's side to win, because that army is the beloved's army. Nevfel loses the first battle and wins the second. When Leyla's father says that the girl's marriage contract has been made and that two men do not suit one woman, Nevfel is ashamed and withdraws. Mecnun throws it in his face that he did not keep his word.

Then Mecnun goes from tent to tent as the chained partner of an old man who lives by sorcery, because the road passes through Leyla's encampment. In another scene he pretends to be blind and looks at his beloved's face.

On the wedding night, Leyla tells Ibn-i Selam, who wants to lift her veil, that since her school days a jinn has never left her side and will kill anyone who comes near with a single blow. The man believes her and never comes near again. According to TDV, this lie takes the place of the slap motif in Nizami. I think it is the cleverest invention in the story.

Zeyd, the letters, the erased picture

The loyal friend Zeyd brings the news of the marriage to the desert. Mecnun's letter is full of reproach: outwardly you were with me, inwardly with someone else. Leyla's answer is an apology built on the image of the nightingale in a cage. Zeyd carries the letters both ways.

The father comes to the desert and gives advice once more, Mecnun tells him to leave him be, and the old man says goodbye helplessly. When Mecnun hears of his father's death, he throws himself on the grave. Then he is left completely alone. The wild animals are his army; Fuzuli calls him the shah of the land of sorrow. One day he sees, drawn on a surface, the two of them side by side; he erases Leyla's image and leaves his own, and to those who ask why, he says that on the path of love the lover must be in plain sight and the beloved hidden.

On another night the sky enters the scene. Mecnun tells his trouble to the planets one by one; when Mercury does not understand, he switches to another tune, and when none of them answers, he turns directly to God and prays until morning. According to the heading, his prayer is answered.

When Ibn-i Selam dies, Zeyd brings the news. Mecnun weeps over his rival's death, and Zeyd is astonished. The beloved's husband has died, the way is open, but the hero does not rejoice. I think this is where the book says openly for the first time what kind of love it is talking about.

Meeting in the desert

Leyla sets out, the caravan leaves her behind, and wandering alone in the dark she ends up where Mecnun is. She asks who he is; he says, I am Mecnun. Mecnun asks who she is too. Leyla reveals herself, calls him to her side and recites a gazel.

Mecnun says do not set fire to a weak bush, says that back when there was light in my eyes you hid your face, says he does not want Leyla to become Mecnun, and recites a gazel saying that whoever seeks the perfection of love must keep away from the beauty of outward form. In one couplet he asks: if I am I, what are you; if you are you, what am I? As someone who studied philosophy at ODTÜ (Middle East Technical University), I hear this not as a declaration of love but as a riddle about identity.

Leyla does not object; she agrees with him. She counts the days she spent chasing adornment as a mistake and decides to draw the veil of nothingness over herself. Just then someone appears on top of his camel: the man looking for Leyla, who finds her and takes her back. Mecnun is again left with the snakes and the ants. Right after this, Fuzuli describes him through a kind of ascension: angels in the guise of wild animals are his companions, he is far from eating and drinking, someone who has seen the truth through the metaphor.

This scene is the center of the book. All the tension of the love story is built on union, and when union comes, the hero pulls back.

Two deaths, one dream

Autumn enters Leyla's life. She falls ill, gives her last wishes to her mother, and then comes a gazel urging her not to fear death. At one point she says that existence itself is a veil. She dies.

When Mecnun gets the news he falls to the ground, goes to the grave with Zeyd, talks to it with his tears, then embraces the grave and dies. They bury the two in the same place. Zeyd has a tomb built and lights its lamp, and the grave becomes a place of pilgrimage. One night in a dream he sees two moons in a garden, angels serving them; they call it the garden of Rıdvan, the gatekeeper of paradise. In the last sixty couplets Fuzuli quarrels with the sky, then with the jealous critic, and ends by saying: if you have nothing good to say, keep quiet.

Its greatest strengths

Fuzuli gives Leyla a voice. In my piece on Masumiyet Müzesi on this site I was angry that Kemal never wonders what Füsun wants. In a mesnevi written in 1535, Leyla speaking for close to two hundred couplets in her own room surprises me.

The second strength is the way it builds ideas. Fuzuli ties love and beauty to each other: he says "Hüsn olmasa aşk zahir olmaz" (Fuzuli, Leyla ile Mecnun), without beauty love would not appear, and immediately states the reverse too. Then he tests this bond in the desert.

The third is the voice. The couplets are short, the aruz meter flows, the story breathes through the gazels. As someone who reads Ottoman divan poetry, I read Fuzuli not as a Turkish copy of Nizami but as someone speaking in his own voice.

Weak points and debate

The opening is long. The prose preface is the kind of thing an ordinary reader opens and puts down after a few lines. The narrative is slow, too: few events, many laments, and the same images (rose, nightingale, moth, fire) keep recurring.

The language is a serious obstacle. I think reading it without notes is almost impossible, and in the simplified versions the music of the couplets is most likely lost.

Then there is Mecnun's harshness: he is rude to his father, to Nevfel, to Leyla. Fuzuli presents this as the price of love. If you ask me, others always pay that price. The voice Leyla is given is wide, but in the end she too withdraws into nothingness.

Finally, the question of interpretation. A Sufi reading is possible, and so is a realist one. TDV says realistic love dominates, and in this piece I read it that way too. Which one you choose depends, I think, on why you opened the book.

Who it is for, and who it is not for

For people who read divan literature, for those who want to compare it with Nizami and Jami, for those looking for something other than union in a love story.

It is not suitable for someone who wants the story fast and in modern language. If I were you, on a first reading I would skip the prose preface and the first four hundred couplets, start at 477 and then go back to the opening. The scenes with headings lend themselves to reading piece by piece. My piece on why reading books is hard, where I describe where reading breaks down with ADHD, is useful for this kind of text too.

Its place on the shelf

In my piece on Solaris on this site I wrote that Harey is made out of Kelvin's memory. After a certain point, the person Mecnun loves also seems to be less Leyla herself than the Leyla he built in his mind; his turning his beloved away in the desert makes me think this. This is my interpretation; the text does not say it this way.

I wrote about time in divan poetry on a Diary page. I also want to read Zeyd's friendship together with the Philia diary: Zeyd carries letters both ways without expecting anything.

I am not saying Mecnun had ADHD. But giving all your attention to a single thing and letting go of the rest of the world resembles the pattern I described in my pieces on all-or-nothing thinking and the hyperfocus at the start of love. A resemblance is not a diagnosis.

Last word

I think Fuzuli's real courage is not making his lovers lose union, but making Mecnun turn it away when it comes. I do not agree with this, but after it there is no way to turn the story back into what it was.