The Story of Layla & Majnun

Classic Persian legend, a favorite of the Sufis, as told by twelfth-century poet Nizami.

An English translation of Nizami’s twelfth-century poetic masterpiece, in which he reshapes the legends of Majnun, the quintessential romantic fool, into a tale of the ideal lover, an allegory of the soul’s search for God. Includes a final chapter translated especially for this edition by Omid Safi and Pir Zia Inayat Khan.

Nizami is the pen-name of Abu Muhammad Ilyas ibn Yusuf ibn Zaki Mu’ayyad (c.1141–1209), a poet from the Transcaucasian city of Ganja. The Story of Layla and Majnun is one of five epic poems written by Nizami, and is considered to be a classic work of Sufi literature.

Dr. Rudolf Gelpke (1928–1972) was a Swiss born Islamic scholar. He studied at the University of Basel where he received his doctorate in Islamic Studies in 1957. Later Gelpke would move to Iran, where he taught at the University of Tehran and then later at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Moreover, he served as an associate professor at UCLA for a year between September 1962 and May 1963. In the eight years he lived in Tehran, he also worked as a freelance writer, who not only translated many famous historical works but also published many of his own works.

Pir Zia Inayat Khan, PhD, is a scholar of religion and teacher of Sufism in the universalist Sufi lineage of his grandfather, Hazrat Inayat Khan. Pir Zia is president of the Inayatiyya and founder of Sulūk Academy, a school of Sufi contemplative study and practice with offerings in North America and Europe, as well as online. He is editor of A Pearl in Wine: Essays in the Life, Music and Sufism of Hazrat Inayat Khan and Caravan of Souls: An Introduction to the Sufi Path of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and author of Saracen Chivalry: Counsels on Valor, Generosity and the Mystical Quest; Mingled Waters: Sufism and the Mystical Unity of Religions; and Dream Flowers: The Collected Works of Noor Inayat Khan with a Critical Commentary by Pir Zia Inayat Khan. Pir Zia divides his time between Richmond, Virginia and Suresnes, France.