The Burdah: The Singable Translation of Busiri’s Classic Poem in Praise of the Prophet
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Translator
Mostafa Azzam
Description
About The Book
THE FIRST EVER SINGABLE TRANSLATION OF QASIDAT AL-BURDAH
Mawlaya salli wa sallim da’iman abadan
‘Ala habibika khayri l-khalqi kullihimi
Around the globe, if you do a search of all poetry,
You’ll find an ode has been sung the most throughout history:
Imam Busiri’s qasidah poem of eulogy,
Qasidat al-Burdah to the best of humanity.
Mawlaya salli wa sallim da’iman abadan
‘Ala habibika khayri l-khalqi kullihimi
Sung everywhere in the favored language of ‘arabi.
Not just by Arabs, but each non-Arab community.
Now in your hands is the first translation in history
That can be sung in the English in its entirety.
Mawlaya salli wa sallim da’iman abadan
‘Ala habibika khayri l-khalqi kullihimi
To praise the Prophet is no spectator activity.
So let your lips taste the sweetness of the lines that you see;
And let your tongue and your being move with its melody,
All while your heart is entranced and dancing in ecstasy.
Mawlaya salli wa sallim da’iman abadan
‘Ala habibika khayri l-khalqi kullihimi
About the Contributor(s)
About the author
Sharaf al-Din al-Busiri: Muhammad ibn Saʿid al-Busiri (608–696 AH / 1211–1294 CE) was an Egyptian poet and Sufi whose verse in praise of the Prophet Muhammad has been loved across the Muslim world for more than seven centuries. He was born in Upper Egypt, his nisba drawn from the village of Abusir, and raised between there and Dalas. Moving to Cairo as a young man, he memorized the Qurʾan, studied the Arabic sciences, and earned his living as a clerk and a skilled calligrapher. In maturity he entered the Shadhili Sufi path under Abu al-ʿAbbas al-Mursi, the spiritual successor of Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili, and his poetry came to carry the devotion and longing of that tradition. His enduring fame rests on the Qasida al-Burda, the Poem of the Mantle, composed in roughly 160 verses of praise and supplication. By long-told account he wrote it while gravely ill and was healed after seeing the Prophet in a dream, who draped him in his mantle, the burda that gave the poem its name. The Burda became perhaps the most widely recited, sung, memorized, and commented-upon poem in Islamic literature, drawing commentaries from scholars across the centuries, several of which accompany the translations offered here. Al-Busiri also composed the Hamziyya, a longer ode in the Prophet's praise. He died in Egypt and is honored as one of the great voices of Prophetic devotion. (Some sources give his death as 691 AH.)
About the foreword writer
Abdul Aziz Suraqah: Abdul Aziz Suraqah is an American Muslim translator, teacher, and author based in Toronto, Canada. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, he embraced Islam as a teenager after reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which sparked an enduring engagement with Islamic learning. He pursued traditional Islamic education in Yemen at Dar al-Hadith al-Khayriyya, in Mauritania at the mahdara of Umm al-Qura under the tutelage of Shaykh Muhammad Salim Ould 'Addud, and in Morocco, where he was among the first Western students admitted full-time to the traditional Qur'an school in the remote village of Sidi Ghiyyath. His studies focused on theology, legal theory, Arabic grammar, rhetoric, and literature. Since 1998, he has taught Arabic and Islamic studies, and from 2005 he has dedicated himself to full-time translation from Arabic into English, producing over fifty published and unpublished works. His translations span classical texts in Sufism, theology, and prophetic devotion, including 'Realities of Sufism' (Haqaiq an al-Tasawwuf by Shaykh Abd al-Qadir Isa), 'The Sanusi Creed', and numerous works related to the Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. He currently teaches Arabic and Islamic studies at Dar al-Ma'rifah and Risalah Foundation in Toronto, where he lives with his family.
Specifications
Publisher
Al-Madina Institute
Author
Sharaf al-Din al-Busiri
Translator
Mostafa Azzam
Year Published
2016
Size
W-4.5 in | H-6 in | D-0.3 in
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