ABSTRACT
Abu-Muhammad Ilyas ibn Mu'ayyad, known by his pen-name, Nizami, never left his birthplace, the fortified market town of Ganjeh in what is now Azerbaijan. In Nizami's tales furthermore converge all the strains making up medieval Islamic civilisation's literature itself: Arabic-Andalusian-type lyricism, Sufism and Greek philosophy, Iranian mythology and the ultimately Sanskrit tradition of tales-within-a-frame-tale to initiate princes into higher wisdom. Ganjeh sufficed to provide the poet with rich libraries in Arabic and Persian, and his verse draws on lore stemming from the entire classical Islamic world, mirroring his own civilisation as much as Dante's Divine Comedy reflects medieval Western Christian culture. Layla-o Majnun, or rather Layli-o Majnun in Persian and Turkish pronunciation, "The Lady-with-Night-Dark-Hair and Her Mad-One-for-Love" is one of the most cherished and abundantly illustrated works in all Eastern Islamic literature. Nizami's attractive teaching veiled beneath his strange verses lies in his commitment–resembling Dante's–to courtly love.
