I dedicated my carpet composition “The Light of Love” to the poem “Leyla and Majnun”, the 3rd poem of the “Hamse” by the great thinker poet Nizami Ganjavi. The meaning of the title of the work – inspired by the fact that Nizami Ganjavi, who wrote the oral epic for the first time and illuminated it with his original poetry, emphasized in this love legend that love is not desire, passion, prejudice, etc., but friendship, loyalty, etc. I wanted this name to mean the purest form of love, separated from worldly desires.

In my carpet composition, I started this epic in the center of the carpet and finished it in the last border;

 In the center of the rug, in the lake area, you can see the surreal portrait of Nizami Ganjavi, which I have drawn with islimi patterns, and his quill pen.  This lake part (i.e. the circle in the center) is divided into 2 parts in the Yin-Yang form: one is the sun and the other is the moon.  This sun and moon represent both the 2 lovers he created and himself.  I mentioned above that Nizami Ganjavi was the first person to write this oral epic and that this epic starts from the central part. Therefore, my purpose in depicting Nizami Ganjavi’s portrait with a quill pen in the sun and moon was that he was the first person to express the enlightenment of this oral epic with his own pen and “reflect his inner world and illuminate it in a way”.

In the lunar part of Yin-Yang, I tried to give a crescent shape by giving the color of the quill pen in yellow tones. Since Leyli is often called “moon piece, crescent or moon” in the poem, Leyli represents the moon here and Majnun represents the sun.

I should mention that in the poem the two lovers refer to themselves as being trapped in darkness.  For this reason, I depicted the patterns on a dark blue background, as if the moon and the sun in the center were illuminating the entire carpet with two candles at the top and bottom. Every ornament I drew on the carpet (people, animals, flowers, figures with swords and shields) is the product of my imagination.  I described a single candle as I saw it. The only difference is that I lit a candle in pitch darkness, took off my glasses while watching it, watched it with my pure astigmatism eyes, and then drew what I saw. So when you look at the carpet that I created completely from my imagination, you are also looking at the candles, which are symbols of hope and love, through the artist’s own eyes.

There are two candles in the center.  These candles represent the hope and love of two lovers.  The smoke rising and spreading from the candle flame turns into clouds as it rises towards the sun and moon in the center.I have shown this by giving the colors a hierarchical arrangement. The hot sparks and smoke from the flame create a surreal portrait of Leila on the left side of the candle (sunlight side) and a surreal portrait of Majnu on the right side (moonlight side).  Although fate has separated them completely, it is their hope and love that brings them together.

In the corners of the center are weapons turned against the protagonists of the poem, symbols representing the battles in the poem.

The hair of the portraits formed by the smoke from the candle turns into animal images. These animals and the patterns on their backgrounds, whose colors are arranged in a hierarchical order, resemble dark fog as they approach the sword shields and lighter clouds as they approach the two clouds above.   As you move upwards, the color lightens, signifying freedom and purity.

I have explained the meaning of the center part of the carpet, now I will reveal the secret of the borders: There are 3 main borders.  In the small border near the center, there are yellow roses tied together; yellow roses signify separation, and being tied together signifies the lovers’ devotion and loyalty to each other.

After the main border, there were camels, which I depicted as a frostless pattern. These camels are arranged in the order of caravans (since this legend is an Arab legend, I symbolized the tribes with “caravan”). I depicted these caravans of camels in contrasting colors as if they were moving in opposite directions along the carpet. These caravans, whose paths cross but do not mix, represent the tribes of Leyla and Majnun. Neither a friendly embassy nor a war can unite these two tribal families. For this reason, I created the camels in the same way as a formless pattern, I aimed to separate them only by the contrast in their colors; I wanted to express that people are not superior to each other and that they are the same as they are different and different as they are the same. And finally, in the small border furthest from the middle, I depicted pale white flowers that have the same form as the flowers in the other small borders but are different in color. These white flowers express the end of the saga; the death of the two lovers. They can only come together after their deaths by being buried side by side.