Leylâ ile Mecnun

Turkish love poem composed by Fuzulı̂ in 942/1536, important for its integration of the mystic and the erotic. The poem, arranged in 3096 bayts, was dedicated to Oways Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Baghdad. The poem represents the culmination of the Turkish mat̲nawī tradition in that it raised the personal and human love-tragedy to the plane of mystical longing and ethereal aspiration; see R. Dankoff, "The lyric in the romance: the use of ghazals in Persian and Turkish masnavīs," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 43 (1984):9-25. Fożūlī's poem is modeled on Neẓāmī's Laylī o Majnūn, and on a popular narrative on the same theme by 'Abd-Allāh Hātefī (see A. Bombaci, La letteratura turca (2nd ed.) Florence, 1969, pages 246-252; and E. Davies, Leyla and Mejnûn by Fuzûlî. London, 1970, pages 84-114).