вЂњIt was a kind of an honourable love, where it was not about the physical, but about the soul. This special genre emerged in the Umayyad period (7th to 8th centuries CE) and includes the timeless real-life love stories of Majnoun Layla, Qays and his Lubna, Jamil and his Buthayna and Kuthaiyr, the lover of Azza and many more. Poems of lost love in the desert are also known as Al Ghazal Al Udhri or Udhrite Ghazal, after the tribe of Banu Udhrah who were known for their chaste and self-effacing love for the unattainable woman. вЂњThere are so many romantic figures in our heritage, and some of the most famous ones are usually stories of unrequited love, where the heroes never married their love in the end,вЂќ he says. вЂњThe Arabs are famous for their seductive, passionate love poems and prose,вЂќ says professor Hasan Al Naboodah, an Emirati historian and dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the UAE University in Al Ain.

In love with Layla bint SaвЂ™d since childhood, whose вЂњhair was dark as layl вЂќ, Qays watched as she was forced to marry another, which drove him mad and into the desert. Qays ibn Al Mulawwah's legendary poems of undying love for his Layla earned him the nickname Majnoun Layla вЂ“ crazy for Layla or Layla's madman вЂ“ and the lover's tragic, unrequited love story is known as the Arabian Romeo and Juliet.

вЂњI draw a picture of her in the dust /and cry, my heart in torment / I complain to her about her: for she left me / lovesick, badly stricken / I complain of all the passion I have / suffered, with a plaint toward the dust / Love makes me want to turn to LaylaвЂ™s land / complaining of my passion and flames in me. Ranting poetic lines of anguish, he obsessively writes a name in the sands using his finger or a stick вЂ“ Layla. Sometime in the late 7th century, a young Bedouin wanders the wilderness of the Arabian Desert. From the ancient tale of Layla to the modern verse of Nizar Qabbani, poetry of undying love has always held a special place in the hearts of Arab people, and they created a unique genre of romantic verse of express and celebrate it.

Nizar qabbani love poem