New Delhi: A picture of two people is in circulation since many years now and it is being claimed that they are the real faces of Laila-Majnu from the 7th century.
The image with the said claim is viral on every social media platform (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) including the General Knowledge pages on these sites. The claim also appears on many media outlet’s articles.
Journalist anchor Akhilesh Anand also shared this claim via a tweet from his personal official account.
A Twitter Blue subscriber “@/exsecular” with 137.1K followers also shared the image claiming it portrays Laila-Majnu among many other users.
A website called News Track has written an entire article on this picture. The title of the article written by the website is something like this,‘ये है लैला-मजनू की असली तस्वीर, प्यार के लिए ऐसे कुर्बान की थी जान’
https://twitter.com/Oye_Zayn_/status/1628032635422511106?s=20 https://twitter.com/Abhishe60691707/status/1506262460440846345?s=20 https://twitter.com/ReenaSh17904814/status/1511240587705741314?s=20 https://twitter.com/LahariyaRashmi/status/1562429125704355840?s=20 https://twitter.com/Just_Aghori/status/1309741375470989312?s=20
Post links shared by other users
Fact Check/Verification
As per Wikipedia, Laila-Majnu is a story from the 7th Century about the Arabic poet Qays ibn al-Mulawwah and his lover Layla bint Mahdi. If we look carefully at the viral image, the image is quite clear by appearance; while camera photography was invented in the 19th century by Joseph Nicephore Niepce.
Courtesy: photo museum
We performed a reverse image search on each image in the viral picture separately and came across the similar image of the woman on a website “Library of Congress” and according to the title the photograph is from the settled town of Kerak, Jordan, who probably was the wife of a Sheikh. Her high social status is reflected in her expensive clothing (which possibly came from Homs, Syria) and her hair braids. Braids were predominantly worn by Christian women of the tribes of Jordan. Hence, the woman in the viral picture is not Laila, in fact it is some woman from Syria.
Screenshot of the Library of Congress website
When we performed reverse image search on the man’s picture, we came across an article from 2007 on a website “qatarvisitor.blogspot.com” and found the similar image of the man as in the viral picture. According to the article, the man in the picture is Sheikh Faisal, the great great-grandson of Jassim bin Mohammed al Thani.
Thus, the viral image is not of Laila-Majnu and the claim in circulation is complete and entirely false.
| Claimed By | Social Media Users |
| Claimed Reviewed By | The Searchlight |
| Claim Source | Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube |
| Claim Fact Check | False |
