Construing the Boundaries of Madness in Early Arabic Literature: Majnūn's Marvelous Poetry

This article examines the function of lyric poetry by demonstrating how prosimetric sources portray an insane poet. It argues that the earliest biographies of the poet, lover, and madman Majnūn (ca. 688) reveal how the boundary between madness and rationality is socially constructed, and how early Arabic literature navigated that boundary by construing a poetic madman who was to be marveled at from a distance. Drawing from historical discourses on madness in early Islam, medical ideas about lovesickness, and mad and disability studies, it shows how the biographies indicate that Majnūn's madness placed him beyond the normalized madness of contemporaneous poet-lovers due to his “going wild” tawaḥḥush among beasts before insanity leads him to death. Rather than frame Majnūn as exemplary or nonexemplary, the biographies articulate how this unruly madness causes Majnūn's poetry to become a marvel, demonstrating how anecdotal explanation crafted a model response to lyric poetry's ideal of love.