Nizami’s (d. 1209) Layli o Majnun is a Persian re-telling of the most famous romance from the ‘uhdri corpus of ill-fated, early Islamic lovers. Ostensibly set in the Najd, Nizami’s version maintains many thematic elements of ‘uhdri chastity and unrelenting desire, while structurally the text resembles Nizami’s other Persian romances in its masnavi form with a lengthy introduction. Though it is unknown exactly how the details of the story reached Nizami, the wealth of narrative differences present within Isfahani’s tenth century compilation of the Kitab al-Aghani (Book of Songs) allow for exploration into the multiplicity of ways in which the story was popularly known prior to Nizami’s versification. While scholars such as Hilel and Seyed-Gohrab maintain that Nizami’s main transformation of the story was the addition of Persianate Sufi discourses, in this paper I argue that although Nizami’s rendition does “Persianize” the story, this transformation reflects a Persian courtly aesthetic that casts Majnun as a king of love and of the desert. The paper focuses around a key action in Majnun’s development: his wandering in the desert amongst wild animals. Following Kilpatrick and Khan, I locate Majnun’s wandering within three narrative cycles of the Kitab al-Aghani. Differences within these cycles illustrate differing thematic undertones to the story whereby a courtly-tragic rendering valorizes such wandering as an extension of poetic desire whereas a didactic-ethical rendering begins by condemning Majnun’s desire and thus casts a shadow on wandering as a physical description of such desire. With such strains in mind, I then analyze an episode in Nizami’s Layli o Majnun where the height of Majnun’s wandering is depicted as his establishment of a kingdom of animals in the desert. By putting these texts in conversation, I re-situate the tragic and courtly elements of the story as co-existent within its development and enhanced by Nizami’s Persian retelling. I also question to what extent Sufi discourse dominates Nizami’s text and thus think towards the multiple levels of reception of the story after Nizami in the Persianate world.