Paperblanks 2027 Diary - Layla - Day/Week-at-a-Time

This design pays tribute to an 18th-century binding that housed the Khamsa, a seminal work by Persian Sunni Muslim poet Nizami Ganjavi (c. 1141–1209). Featuring intricate floral detail, our Layla cover design beautifully mirrors the contents of the original volume.

Considered the greatest romantic poet in Persian literature and described as a “creator of poetic scenes,” Nizami brought a colloquial and otherworldly quality to the Persian epic. His best-known work, the Khamsa (also known in English as the Five Treasures), is a series of five long narrative poems. The first of these, Makhzan-ol-Asrâr, was influenced by Sanai Ghaznavi’s The Walled Garden of Truth, an early Sufi book of mystical poetry. The four other poems are medieval romances.

Nizami’s romance story of Layla and Majnun provided the namesake for Eric Clapton’s hit single “Layla,” from the album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, which was highly influenced by Nizami and his poetry of unrequited love.