Al-Burda


Qasīdat al-Burda, or al-Burda for short, is a thirteenth-century ode of praise for Muhammad composed by the Shadhili mystic al-Busiri of Egypt. The poem, whose actual title is "The Celestial Lights in Praise of the Best of Creation", is famous mainly in the Sunni Muslim world. It is entirely in praise of Muhammad, who is said to have been praised ceaselessly by the afflicted poet, to the point that Muhammad appeared in a dream and wrapped him in a mantle or cloak; in the morning the poet discovers that God has cured him.
Bānat Suʿād, a poem composed by Ka'b ibn Zuhayr was originally called Al-Burda. He recited this poem in front of Muhammad after embracing Islam. Muhammad was so moved that he removed his mantle and wrapped it over him. The original Burdah is not as famous as the one composed by al-Busiri even though Muhammad had physically wrapped his mantle over Ka'b, not in a dream like in the case of al-Busiri.

Composition

The Burda is divided into ten chapters and 160 verses, each rhyming with the other. Interspersing the verses is the refrain, "My Patron, confer blessings and peace continuously and eternally on Your Beloved, the Best of All Creation". Each verse ends with the Arabic letter mīm, a style called mīmiyya. The ten chapters of the Burda comprise:
Sufis have traditionally venerated the poem. It is memorized and recited in congregations, and its verses decorate the walls of public buildings and mosques. This poem decorated Prophet's Mosque in Medina for centuries but was erased except for two lines. Over 90 commentaries have been written on this poem. It has been translated by Timothy Winter into English. It has been additionally translated into Hausa, Persian, Urdu, Turkish, the Berber languages, Punjabi, French, German, Sindhi, Saraiki, Norwegian, Chinese, and other languages. It is known and recited by a large number of Sunni Muslims, ordinarily and on special occasions, such as Mawlid, making it one of the most recited poems in the world.

Legacy

The Burda was accepted within Sufi Islam and was the subject of numerous commentaries by mainstream Sufi scholars such as Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, Nazifi and Qastallani It was also studied by the Shafi'i hadith master Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani both by reading the text out loud to his teacher and by receiving it in writing from a transmitter who heard it directly from Busiri himself.
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab considered the poem to be shirk.
Al-Burda was the inspiration behind Ahmad Shawqi's poem, which follows a similar style.
The latest major work in the Burda quasi-genre is Tamim al-Barghouti's , which was written in November and December 2010, first published in 2013, and reorganized in 2020 as a five-part video series: the first three parts explain the three previous Burdas, and the last two parts introduce Barghouti's Burda and explain the rationale behind its composition.