Abstract
The centerpiece of medieval Arabic Islamic devotional poetry is the praise poem to the Prophet Muhammad, the Burdah (Mantle Ode) of the Mamluk period Egyptian poet, al-Busiri (d. 1296). The Burdah’s extraordinary popularity is tied to its role in the miraculous cure that its author experienced after reciting the poem to the Prophet in a dream. The poem was credited with extraordinary barakah, or blessing, and was widely believed to cure maladies, both spiritual and physical and, especially, to procure for both its original author and subsequent “performers” the intercession of the Prophet on the Judgment Day. Such beliefs generated a prodigious production of imitations, amplifications, translations, simple and ornate manuscript copies, commentaries, etc., in an attempt to acquire the blessing of the Burdah. Chief among these was the amplification termed takhmis (“fiver”), in which the new poet adds three half-lines to each original line. Of the hundreds of extant Burdah takhmisat, that of Shams al-Din al-Fayyumi (14th c.) has consistently been one of the most popular. This paper interprets the composition of takhmis in terms of the poetics of performance, both aurally–in terms of how the takhmis incorporates and amplifies through auditory techniques (rhyme, meter, repetition)–and visually–in terms of how the manuscript presentations manipulate scriptural aesthetics and techniques to achieve their performance goals. The study concludes that in both the aural and visual performances, the result of the amplification of the base text is to produce what I have termed a “verbal reliquary.”
Presenters
Suzanne StetkevychSultan Qaboos bin Said Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Department of Arabic & Islamic Studies, Georgetown University, District of Columbia, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Medieval Islam, Devotional Poetry, Performance Practices
