The story of a young boy and girl who fall in love, are kept apart by their families, and eventually unite (or perish in the attempt) is a long-established archetype in Irano-Mediterranean literatures, with examples going back at least as far as Ovid’s Pyramus & Thisbe, emerging again in Greek and Arabic works like Chaereas & Callirhoe and Layla & Majnun, and immortalized in the English canon by Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. While the usual conclusion of this archetypal narrative is either comic (marriage) or tragic (death), occasionally both elements come together to produce a tale of death and rebirth, a theme that naturally lends itself to the topoi of religious salvation. Indeed, two examples of this unusual plot twist, one from eleventh-century Iran and the other from thirteenth-century Iberia, end with the pseudo-death of the protagonists and a mass conversion into Islam or Christianity. As H.R. Jauss predicts, the historical conditions that would motivate such an ending are apparent: both stories were composed at times when inter-religious warfare, the establishment of true religion, and the eradication of heresy were part of the legitimating ideology of the ruling elites and a hallmark of their political practice; by infusing the conventional love story with elements of political allegory and sacred history, these literary works utilize their generic tropes in novel and pertinent ways that address the immediate concerns of their audience, explaining why they gained widespread popularity in their respective milieux. More interesting still, both stories can be traced back to a common source that also emerged in an era of holy war and divine conquest: the ‘udhrī romances of the early Umayyad period, of which Layla & Majnun is the most famous representative. Given the suggestive fact that the later stories situate themselves in the early 700s, and that this was a period when Umayyad rule did indeed extend from Iran to Iberia, it seems plausible that this was the moment in which the ‘udhrī tales gained currency across this wide geography, leaving behind an archetype whose legacy would continue to speak to local audiences and their aspirations and anxieties for centuries to come.