Majnun in the Wilderness

Majnun in the Wilderness

In spite of its diminutive size this magical drawing, heightened with washes and touches of color, stands as a work of art in its own right and was presumably conceived as such. The rendition of the woolly coat of the horned goat dominating the flock in the foreground and the fur of the bear clambering up the rocks above the lion in the center of this composition are extraordinary. A leopard responds to the lion's roar with a particularly feline curve of its spine. The economical use of line used for a pair of mountain sheep at the upper left and the browsing antelope at the upper right, the figure of the gentle Majnun himself, and the trustful gazelle beneath him are all rendered with the sureness of touch and delicacy of a line of lyric poetry.

The poet Nezami's celebrated epic poem about the star-crossed lovers Layla and Majnun became a favorite with illustrators. Separated from Layla, Majnun seeks solace among the wild beasts of the wilderness. The yearning for his beloved translates to a yearning for union with the divine. The name Majnun, which means mad, refers to the imbalance brought about by a single-minded, all-pervasive devotion.

There are many tales and traditions of Sufis, or mystics, who, by their purity of spirit, were able to communicate with wild beasts.[1] While having its roots in literary tradition, drawings of Majnun came to represent the embodiment of the spirit of Sufism. A drawing from the Goloubew Collection in Boston (14.611) of an even more vertically elongated format of shepherds and their flock is very close to this drawing not only in subject matter but in its combination of observed naturalism elevated to a plane of spiritual sensitivity. In the Museum's drawing, the combination of a shepherd attuned to domestic animals and a mystic attuned to wild animals was no doubt intentional and can be interpreted on various levels.[2]

[Swietochowski and Babaie 1989]

Footnotes:

1. See Schimmel, Annemarie. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill, 1975, pp. 207–8.

2. For an example of Majnun and the wild animals, see Gray, Basil. Persian Painting. Geneva, 1961, pI. 120; see also Shah Tahmasp's Khamseh. the British Museum, in Binyon, Laurence. The Poems of Nizami. London, 1928, pI. XIII.

Emile Tabbagh, Paris and New York, until 1973; sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris,October 26, 1973, no. 39); [ Adrienne Minassian, New York, until 1974; sold to MMA]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Persian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 13–December 31, 1989, no. 10.

"October 26, 1973." In Hotel Drouot Sales catalogue. Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1973. no. 39.

Swietochowski, Marie, and Sussan Babaie. Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. no. 10, pp. 30–31, ill. pl. 10 (b/w).