This essay addresses the translation of non-Western literatures by developing indigenous concepts and terms that go beyond fidelity and license, domestication and foreignization. The example of Majnun Layla, a seventh-century story of star-crossed lovers, with its multiple, controversial, and contradictory sources in Arabic, poses a challenge to translation studies as it has developed based on written literary texts. Nizami's transplantation of the story into Persian is neither an adaptation nor a translation but a case of naql, transposition. The essay presents the main references to Majnun Layla by medieval critics and underlines the indeterminacy of the protagonists and of the unfolding of events. This in turn gave twelfth-century Nizami the freedom to rescript the material at hand and graft it onto Persian culture.