Majnun Layla (Arabic: مجنون ليلى‎ Majnūn Laylā, 'Layla's Mad Lover'; Persian: لیلی و مجنون‎ Leyli o Majnun) is an old story of Arabic origin, about the 7th-century Najdi Bedouin poet Qays ibn al-Mullawah and his ladylove Layla bint Mahdi (or Layla al-Aamiriya). "The Layla-Majnun theme passed from Arabic to Persian, Turkish, and Indian languages", most famously through the narrative poem composed in 584/1188 by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi, as the third part of his Khamsa. It is a popular poem praising their love story. Lord Byron called it "the Romeo and Juliet of the East."Qays and Layla fall in love with each other when they are young, but when they grow up Layla's father doesn't allow them to be together. Qays becomes obsessed with her, and his tribe Banu 'Amir and the community gives him the epithet of Majnūn (مجنون "crazy", lit. "possessed by Jinn"). Long before Nizami, the legend circulated in anecdotal forms in Iranian akhbar. The early anecdotes and oral reports about Majnun are documented in Kitab al-Aghani and Ibn Qutaybah's Al-Shi'r wa-l-Shu'ara'. The anecdotes are mostly very short, only loosely connected, and show little or no plot development. Nizami collected both secular and mystical sources about Majnun and portrayed a vivid picture of the famous lovers.Subsequently, many other Persian poets imitated him and wrote their own versions of the romance. Nizami drew influence from Udhrite love poetry, which is characterized by erotic abandon and attraction to the beloved, often by means of an unfulfillable longing.