Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad
A blessed Quranic verse often
repeated in the Maulud months conjures us, “In the bounty of God and in His
mercy: therein alone let them rejoice - It is better than what they hoard!” (10:58).
The greatest exegete Ibn Abbas said: "The bounty of God is The Science,
and His mercy is The Prophet." Accordingly, the two months of Rabiul Awwal
and Rabiul Thani see countless people take to special gatherings in mosques and
homes in which they recite, among other zikir texts, Maulid Syaraful Anam (The
Birth of the Pride of All Creatures) and Maulid Daybai (compiled by the Yemeni
scholar Abdur Rahman al-Daybai). This practice is rooted in the very beginnings
of Islam.
The historian Ibn Sayyid al-Nas
relates that when the Prophet conquered Mekah, he turned to his poet Hassan bin
Thabit and asked him to recite something extemporaneously, whereupon Hassan
replied:
Pillar of those who rely
upon you,
Immunity of those who seek
refuge in you,
Resort of those who seek
herbiage and rain,
and Neighbouring Protector
of those in need of shelter –
You whom the One God has
chosen for His creatures
by planting in him
perfection and purity of character –
You are The Prophet! You are
the best of Human Kind.
Open-handed one, like the
outpouring of a swelling sea –
Both Mikal and Jibril are
with you
helpers to victory, sent by
One Mighty, Irresistible!
Thus, the recitation of poetic
praise of the person (and not just qualities) of Prophet Muhammad, upon
him blessings and peace, began in his very lifetime at the hands of his
Companions, who left no stone unturned in fulfillment of the Divine command in
the Holy Qur’an to “invoke abundant blessings and lavish salutations of
peace on him” (33:56) and to rejoice in his blessed person. Whoever hears
his name and is not instantly moved to bless him, in fact, is characterised in
the Hadith as a rank miser.
Blessing him was - and remains
- an easy command to fulfill, since it was the very person of the Prophet and
the very fact that he had been created which impelled those who knew him to
extol him to their fervent utmost – not with noses buried in booklets as we do
today, but with thundering voices and hyperbolic emotions. Thus did al-Abbas
bin Abd al-Muttalib, the Prophet’s uncle and one of the major Companions,
explicitly refer to the Prophet’s Birth when he addressed him before the crowd
of the Sahaba:
When you were born, the sun
rose
over the earth and the
horizon was illumined with your light.
So we – in that radiance,
that light,
those paths of guidance –
can pierce through!
In the wake of the early
generations, the Ulema of Islam through the centuries similarly vied in poetic
and historical praise of the Prophet. Uniquely famous in the genre is the 162-line
poem formally entitled al-Kawakib al-Durriyya bi-Mad-hi Khayr al-Bariyya, “The
Stellar Pearls in Homage to the best of All Creation” but commonly known as
Qasidat al-Burda or “The Mantle Poem” by the pious Moroccan litterateur
Sharafuddin al-Busiri. This masterpiece of Arabic sensibility is sung from East
to West in countless gatherings, especially at this time of the year, and
contains lines of unsurpassed beauty among panegyrics, though virtually
untranslatable:
(Muhammad) Whom lofty
mountains endeavoured to turn from himself with offerings of gold, whereupon he
showed them greater loftiness, And what confirmed that he renounced them was
his need: Even dire need has no sway over those God makes immune!
For how can need attract to
the world the one were it not for whom the world would not have come out of the
void?
The title of this great poem is
derived from two incidents, one historical, the other a dream. The first took
place when an earlier lover of the Prophet, the Companion Kaab ibn Zuhayr, recited
a similar poem before the Prophet which contained the line inna al-rasula la-nurun yustada'u bihi, “Verily the Prophet is a light from which one’s
light is sought”. Upon hearing this moving line, the Prophet rose and placed
his mantle on Kaab’s shoulders as a gift of appreciation. The dream was
experienced almost seven centuries later when al-Busiri (d. 696 H), at the time
partly paralysed by a stroke, was visited by the Prophet who, in the same
gesture, placed his mantle on al-Busiri’s shoulders in appreciation of the
latter’s poem, whereupon he woke up hale and sound.
One of the last caliphs of the
Ottoman State, the pious Sultan Abd al-Hamid Khan ibn al-Sultan Ahmad Khan
looked back to al-Busiri's lines when he began his own poem in praise of the Prophet
with the line Ya sayyidi ya rasulallahi khudh bi-yadi ("My liegelord,
Messenger of God, take my hand!''). This poem was calligraphied in full on the
walls of Lady Aisha's room where the Prophet was laid to rest in Madinah.
Al-Busiri himself had looked back to Hassan ibn Thabit both in theme and metre,
and both the Burda and Sultan Abd al-Hamid used the kamil or "perfect''
metre chosen by Hassan ibn Thabit in the four lines he had improvised for the
Prophet.
The perennial theme is the
Prophet as humanity's greatest hope. The Qur'an names the Prophet "nothing
but a Mercy to the Worlds'' and the Prophet describes himself in the Hadith as
"nothing but a Gift of Mercy". Maulid poems capture the direct
experience of that Divine Mercy. In the following lines from al-Daybaee's
Maulid Eulogy we recognise the longing cry familiar to every visitor to
Madinah:
There stands the Green Dome
wherein is
found a Prophet whose light
dispels pitch darkness!
True has his good pleasure
with us proved, as communion grows near
and commendation greets us
from all sides.
Say to your soul: Enough
delay!
Today from the Beloved no
veil blocks us.
Your fill of the Beloved
take, therefore, to all intents.
Felicity is ours, banishing
opposites!
Similarly we hear, among the
delicate lines of the oft-recited Maulid
Syaraful Anam:
Best of all those who trod
the earth, whom all creatures seek for intercessor,
By him break the shackles of
every sinful slave,
There is no one like him, by
whom triumph all followers;
Whoever dies loving him
reaps every imaginable prize!
The Quran
compares human hearts to hard rocks, but adds that water is known to gush even
from rocks. Our own hearts may also melt when we experience poetry praising our
Beloved Prophet the way he deserves to be praised, and tap its treasures for
the refreshment of our souls.
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