Layla and Majnun of Anatolia, Chagatai and Azerbaijan fields: Story arc, cast of characters, time and place factors in Edirneli Şahidi, Ali Şir Nevayi and Fuzuli's Layla and Majnun masnavis (Comparative review)

Layla and Majnun masnavis are among the leading love masnavis of Turkish, Arabic and Persian literatures. This love story, which generated in the verbal tradition of Arabic literature, passed from there to Persian literature and was adapted to the form of a masnavi for the first time with Nizami. Layla and Majnun, which was first published in the Anatolian field of Turkish literature in the 15th century by Edirneli Şahidi under the title Gülşen-i Uşşak, was also written by Ali Şir Nevayi in the same century in Central Asian Turkish literature. In the 16th century Fuzuli, an important representative of the Azerbaijani literary field, brought this love story to a literary peak with his Layla and Majnun masnavi. This study, aims to compare the Layla and Majnun masnavis written by Edirneli Şahidi, Ali Şir Nevayi and Fuzuli, important representatives of the Anatolian, Chagatai and Azerbaijani literary fields who lived in the 15th and 16th centuries, by using modern and classical text analysis methods. The study includes the comparison of masnavis with the same theme and name in terms of story arc, cast of characters, time and place factors. Which is written by authors from two different centuries and three different fields of Turkish literature. By this means, it is aimed to reveal the interactions of the mentioned works with each other, based on the similarities and differences of the content and editing methods of the mentioned masnavis.