Islah: Journal of Islamic Literature and History

Love and Spirituality in Leylâ ile Mecnûn: A Cultural Study of Ottoman Sufi Poetry

2025-06-25T14:46:17+00:00

This paper examines Fuzûlî's Leylâ ile Mecnûn as a complex work of Ottoman Islamic literature. It transcends being a love story and serves as a spiritual, cultural, and psychological text. Drawing on recent studies of Sufi poetry, Ottoman culture, and manuscript illustrations, this paper examines how Fuzûlî transforms the classic Majnûn-Layla story into a mystical allegory. This allegory represents a divine longing (maḥabba), a letting go of the self (fanā'), and spiritual knowledge (ma'rifa). The poem employs symbols, metaphors, and themes that reflect the Islamic mystical tradition and Ottoman sociocultural environment. Using local folk elements, court rituals, and powerful images, the poem becomes a means to impart spiritual lessons to both the elite and the general public. In addition, the study examines the visual aspects of illustrated manuscripts and how the poem sounds when performed, which further emphasizes its spiritual message. The poem's connections to earlier Arabic and Persian sources are reinterpreted through an Ottoman perspective. This paper concludes that Leylâ ile Mecnûn is more than a romantic epic. It is a cultural and devotional object that showcases the spiritual imagination of the Ottoman Islamic world, connecting literature, mysticism, and identity through a shared poetic narrative.

My Heart is Aflame: Exploring Three Dimensions of the Poet's Voice in Selected Stanzas

2025-06-25T15:15:46+00:00

My Heart is Aflame by Al-Mutanabbi is a lengthy poem that intricately weaves personal emotion, panegyric praise, and rhetorical self-pride. This study aims to examine three dimensions of the poet’s voice in selected stanzas, employing a stylistic approach that focuses on diction, imagery, figurative language, and concrete words. The analysis reveals that Al-Mutanabbi consistently constructs a complex lyrical persona: a wounded lover suffering from unrequited affection, an admirer exalting the figure of Saif al-Dawlah in heroic terms, and an individual proudly affirming his prowess as both poet and warrior. Through the use of intense word choices and rich figurative and imagistic elements, the poem conveys the poet’s identity as a grand figure within the cultural and literary tradition of classical Arabic society. This analysis highlights Al-Mutanabbi’s expressive strength in blending personal sentiment with elevated linguistic strategies, making his poetry a vehicle of self-assertion and cultural positioning.

Divine Love and Sincere Devotion in the Mystical Poetry of Rabi’ah al-Adawiyah

2025-06-24T07:54:57+00:00

This paper examines the concept of mahabbah lillah (divine love) in the poetry of Rabi’ah al-Adawiyyah from a literary perspective, drawing on biographical and cultural contexts. As an 8th-century female Sufi figure, Rabi’ah is known for her sincere love for God—motivated neither by fear of Hell nor desire for Paradise, but by pure devotion. The study analyzes ten selected poems that express themes of sacred love, spiritual longing, and total surrender. The findings reveal that her poetry not only possesses literary value but also holds deep spiritual significance within the early Islamic tradition. Her work demonstrates how literature can become a powerful medium for expressing inner experiences and the human relationship with the Divine.

Visual Interpretation Of Love In Mohammed Hamaki's Layla Video Clip

2025-06-25T12:33:13+00:00

This article aims to examine the visual interpretation of love through audiovisual representations applied to Layla's music video. Layla is an Amiyyah Arabic song sung by Mohammed Hamaki. In discussing the audiovisual meaning, the researcher examines the cultural meaning of the Layla video clip and its love symbols through Peirce's triadic framework. This research was descriptive and qualitative with the use of listening technique with tapping. In this study, a semiotic theory by Charles Sanders Peirce was used, with an approach by Stuart Hall’s theory of representattion. The results showed that the emotional and cultural meaning were found within the triadic semiotic argument of Peirce in Layla's audiovisual work. These findings provide a more comprehensive understanding of Peirce's semiotic theory as applied to literature and audiovisual art, especially in video clips.