The Poet Who Answered With Praise
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Welcome. Some poems are written to impress kings. Some are written for love. And some are written by a soul that has found something so beautiful it cannot stay silent.
This is a poem of the third kind. Its author is Imam al-Busiri, a poet and scholar of Egypt who lived about seven hundred and fifty years ago. He is most famous for another poem, the Burdah, the Poem of the Cloak, which Muslims around the world still sing.
But he also wrote this long and lovely ode, called the Hamziyya, because every one of its many verses ends with the same sound, the soft Arabic letter hamza. Its other name is Umm al-Qura, the Mother of Villages, a name for Makkah, and it is all, from beginning to end, in praise of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
In this summary, we will not translate the poem line by line. Poetry does not travel that way. Instead, we will walk through its great themes, the way a friend might tell you about a song they love.
We will hear about his light before the world began, his birth, his childhood, his miracles, his night journey, his character, and finally the poet’s own humble hope to be counted among those who loved him.
