Poetry
Layli va Majnun
Not translated into English
Alisher Navoiy · 1484
Opening lines
Ey yaxshi oting bila sarog‘oz,
Anjomig‘akim yetar har og‘oz.
Ey sendin ulus xujasta farjom,
Og‘ozingga aql topmay anjom.
O You with whose fair Name all things begin,
And to whose end every beginning comes.
O You through whom the people find a blessed end,
To Your beginning reason finds no end.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
Qays, the long-awaited son of an Arab tribal chief, grows up learned and vigorous, until the day he sees Layli, of the Omir tribe, and faints from loving her. His people end up chaining him, and the girl's father gives her, without asking her opinion, to Ibn Salom, of the Banu Asad. Qays then makes for the desert, neglects his body, loses his reason and is no longer called anything but Majnun, the possessed; he flees the comfort of men and lives as a friend of the beasts.
Context
This poem of 1484 is the third of a cycle of five composed from 1483 to 1485 in answer to those of Nizami, but in Chagatai, whereas Persian was the language of learned poetry; its author was the first to complete such a cycle in Turkic. It has thirty-eight chapters and three thousand six hundred and twenty-three couplets, including a prologue of nine chapters: praise of God, prayer, praise of the Prophet and of his night journey, then of Nizami, of Jami, of the sultan and of his son. The subject already had more than a hundred and twenty versions in the literatures of the East, and he treated it in his own way.
Who it is for
In Chagatai, with no French version. A long narrative poem, preceded by a prologue of praises that can be read separately.
Prizes and reception
A Tashkent metro station named after the poet shows the story on a large blue-green ceramic panel.