Majnun among the wild animals'

The image illustrates a scene from the famous love story of “Layla and Majnun”, one of the most prominent works of Arab literature that became particularly popular in the later version by the Persian poet Nizami. The story is about the Arab Bedouin Majnun and his love for his childhood friend Layla that cannot be fulfilled. Majnun goes mad (Arab “majnun” means “madman”) and withdraws into the solitude of the desert where he lives among the wild animals. The illustration shows Majnun on a hill in the desert, kneeling down with a deer that eats from his hand. The folio comes from an anthology of poetical texts which was probably commissioned by the Timurid prince Ibrahim-Sultan as a gift for his brother Baysunqur. The colophon in the manuscript documents its origin in a Shiraz workshop. The scribe Mahmud al-Husayni completed it in the month Rabi' I of 823, the spring of 1420.