Blessed Grave of the Composer of the epic "Qaseeda Burda Shareef", Imam Sharfuddin Busiri (radi Allahu anhu) in Egypt
Little is known about his childhood although scholars surmise that he received the usual education for children of his time, He would have attended a Qur'an school & memorized the entire Qur'an. Kilani asserts that al-Busiri's family must have been poor as he was forced to search for work from a young age. Sometime during his youth, He made his way to Cairo, Where he pursued his studies. There he was exposed to the important Islamic sciences, Arabic language & linguistics, literature, history & the biography of the Prophet Muhammad. Even as a young man, al-Busiri began to compose poetry, Although not of a religious nature. For example, In the year 637/1240, At the age of 30, He composed a poem to petition the King Najm al-Din al-Ayyubi when he failed to allot a generous endowment to al-Busiri's mosque. An accomplished poet, He would often recite his poetry & give lessons at mosques in Cairo. A number of young poets studied under him, Such as 'Athir al-Din Muhammad Ibn Yusuf Abu Hayyan al-Andalusi (d. 725/1325), Abu al-Fath bin Sayyid al-Nas al-Ya'mari (d. 734/1334) & 'Izz al-Din bin Jama'at (d. 735/1335).
Al-Busiri lived in various locations in Cairo & in the Delta region, working primarily as a scribe & poet for the local rulers. At one time, a ruler offered him the position of a muḥtasib, or market inspector, in Cairo, but he rejected it. From this job offer, we can ascertain that al-Busiri must have had a decent knowledge of Islamic law as the job of market inspector requires a thorough knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence & law. He lived for a long time in the Lower Egypt town of Bilbis (from around 659-663/1261-1265) & worked there as a scribe & manuscript copyist. He seems to have also been skilled in accounting, although al-Maqrizi claimed that he made a lot of mistakes & was not competent in this skill. Al-Busiri was interested in religious polemics & read the Hebrew Bible, New Testament & religious history of Judaism & Christianity primarily in order to defend Islam & the position of the Prophet Muḥammad. Some of his colleagues at work were Jewish & Christian & he was known to engage in fiery debates with them. He was interested in proving to them that the Gospels did not indicate that Jesus was a god & that it contained signs of the coming of the Prophet Muḥammad. He was also concerned with correcting what he held to be mistakes in the Hebrew Bible that told stories of the prophets & of their sins.
In addition to being a poet, al-Busiri was also a fine calligrapher & composer of prose, although nothing of his writing or calligraphy is extant. Coming from a humble background, it was said at one point, he made a living designing the engravings for tombstones. In an attempt to make money, he also opened a Qur'an school for children in Cairo, but this venture failed & he was forced to close it. As for his domestic life, his poems paint a hellish impression of living with his constantly pregnant wife & gaggle of children. He talks of his wife conspiring with his sister-in-law to get him to divorce her by hitting him & pulling out the hairs from his beard. He also complains in detail about old age, his inability to provide his children with enough food & the problem he faced when he could not provide his daughter with furnishings for her home for her marriage.
He spent some time in the central Delta town of al-Maḥallah, where he was the poet & scribe for the mayor & received a monthly wage for composing panegyric poems of the ruler. In al-Maḥallah, al-Busiri clashed with the local Christian scribes, copyists, poets & wrote verses complaining of his treatment at their hands. Sometime during his stay in al-Maḥallah, it seems he broke his leg on a visit to the public baths & complained bitterly about his leg in a number of poems.
His relation with others was so bad that it reached the point where they wished he would die. Once, when he became very sick, a rumor quickly spread that he had died. Upon recovering from his sickness, he wrote a satirical poem to mock his enemies who had spread rumors of his death:
I am not the one who would die before them I will survive them & weep over their graves, It’s true that I had almost lost my life but the generosity of this vizier gave me a new life.
Al-Būṣīrī didn’t only have enemies among Jews & Christians, but also among his coreligionists & even those closest to him, including his wife. He wrote satirical poems attacking anyone who criticized or insulted him, recording each event & rebuttal in a poem. According to al-Maqrizi, al-Busiri would befriend important members of the court, such as the vizier Zain al-Din Ya'qub bin al-Zubair & would support them no matter if they were just or oppressive rulers. He supported the Mamluk rulers & wrote zealous panegyric poems praising the Turkish Mamluks that also affronted the local Arab population. The only positive characteristic of al-Busiri recorded by al-Maqrizi was that he was generous.
As a man could not benefit from the teaching of al-Shazili, because in his morals & domestic life, we find things that don't correspond to Sufi ethics. In addition, he had a large family & was driven to compose poems in praise of the princes & viziers. In these poems (al-Busiri) sometimes praised oppressive rulers who deserved to be rebuked & this has nothing to do with Sufism... As for al-Busiri as a poet, he was greatly influenced by Sufism.
It is not known when exactly al-Busiri became a disciple of Abu al-'Abbas al-Mursi, but it can be posited that this happened later on in his life, at least some years before the death of al-Mursi in 686/1287. At least in the beginning of his practice of Sufism, al-Busiri seemed to have struggled to follow Sufi principles & desired to live in isolation from people although he was prevented as he had a large family & was often unable to feed them due to his poverty:
If I were on my own, I would have been a disciple in a Sufi hostel or a worshipper in a cave.
His later poetry consists mainly of panegyric poems praising the Prophet Muḥammad & bears little similarity to that of his earlier satirical poems. Perhaps after becoming a Sufi disciple, he underwent a spiritual awakening, which may be seen in the form the Burdah & the accompanying story of its composition & refrained from his previous harsh & misanthropic nature. There seems to be conflicting information about al-Busiri's life as seen in the biographies of non-Sufi historians & that of hagiographies written by Sufi scholars. Especially since Sufi hagiographies always describe him as an older man with a head of white hair, it can be presumed that while he might have been a misanthrope & generally unpleasant person during his youth, he must have changed his ways perhaps later on in his life as an older man.
The timeline of al-Busiri's life is not clear, although it is known that as a grown man, he was drawn towards Sufism & joined the Shazili order under the guidance of his Shaykh Abu al-'Abbas al-Mursi in Alexandria, which at the time was a center for North African Sufis. At this time, the Shazili Sufi order was still in its infancy, having been founded by al-Mursi, who was the disciple of Abu al-Ḥassan al-Shazili. Al-Busiri was fond of al-Mursi & studied Sufi thought & practice under him; this background would have a strong influence on his later poetry. He was faithful to his order & wrote poems full of praise of al-Shazili & al-Mursi & their spiritual attributes & ranking. Al-Busiri was the contemporary of Ibn al-Farid, the great Sufi poet & mystic. It was also said that he was a friend of Ibn 'Ata' Allah al-Sakandari, the Sufi scholar & jurists who wrote the famous Hikam, or collection of Sufi aphorisms as well as a spiritual biography of al-Shazili & al-Mursi.
In Sufi hagiographies, al-Busiri is painted as a saint-like figure who had reached the high spiritual station (Maqam) of al-ghousiyyah al-kubra. They claim that when he would walk down the street, the young & old would come out to greet him & kiss his hand. His body was said to have emitted a sweet scent & he wore fine clothes, had a head of snow-white hair, a humble smile, was ascetic in his lifestyle & had a respectable & virtuous character. Kilani disregards these attributes of al-Busiri based on his readings of his poetry. Kilani fails to see that it is quite possible that al-Busiri was indeed an unpleasant person for much of his life until he discovered Sufism, mended his ways & reached a high spiritual station that was respected & acknowledged by his fellow Sufis.
Despite this, Kilani divides al-Busiri's praise poetry of the Prophet Muḥammad into two periods, the first from before al-Busiri's Hajj & the second after his return from the Hajj. Kilani posits that al-Busiri did not perform his pilgrimage until at least after 653/1255. Before going on Hajj, he composed a number of praise poems, especially ones that referred to his longing to visit the tomb of the Prophet. Upon his arrival to Madinah & Makkah, he composed poems revealing his joy of being at the tomb of his beloved & other places the Prophet had visited.
Although buried in Alexandria, it is not known if al-Busiri spent his last years in Cairo or Alexandria. While his official tomb is located in Alexandria, there previously has been some dispute about where al-Busiri was buried. Al-Maqrizi recorded that he died in the al-Manṣuri Hospital in Cairo. Furthermore, al-'Ayyashi, a North African traveller who visited Cairo in 1073/1663 , mentioned that he visited al-Busiri's tomb in the area of the jurist Imam al-Shafi'i's tomb located in the southern cemetery of Cairo. One scholar has ascertained that the initial confusion about al-Busiri's burial location is due to the fact that there was another scholar, Abu al-Qassim Hibat Allah bin 'Ali bin Mas'ud al-Ansari al-Khazraji al-Munastiri, also known as al-Busiri, who died a century before our al-Busiri's death in 598/1202. The older al-Busiri was indeed buried at the foot of al-Muqattam hills, where historians presumably thought the younger poet Al-Busiri was buried.
Composition
Al-Busiri narrated the miraculous circumstances of his inspiration to write the Burdah:
I had composed a number of praise poems for the Prophet, including one that was suggested to me by my friend Zain al-Din Y'aqub b. al-Zubair. Some time after that, I was stricken by falij (stroke), an illness that paralyzed half of my body. I thought that I would compose this poem & so I made supplications to the Prophet Muḥammad to intercede for me & (& ask God to) cure me. I repeatedly sang the poem, wept, prayed & asked for intercession. Then I slept & in my dream, I saw the Prophet. He wiped my face with his blessed hands & covered me in his cloak (burdah). Then I woke up & found I was able to walk; so I got up & left my house. I had told no one about what had happened.
I encountered a Sufi (faqir) on my way & he said to me: "I want you to give me the poem in which you praise the Prophet."
I said: "Which one?"
So he said: "The one that you composed during your sickness."
Then he recited the first verse & said: "I swear by God that I heard it in a dream last night being sung in the presence of the Prophet Muḥammad. I saw the Prophet was pleased with it & covered the person who sang it with his cloak."
So I recited the poem to him & he memorized it & related his vision to others.
The Burda is divided into 10 chapters & 160 verses. Interspersing the verses is the refrain, "My Master, descend peace & blessings continuously & eternally on Your Beloved, the Best of All Creation" (Arabic: مولاي صلي و سلم دائما أبدا على حبيبك خير الخلق كلهم). Each verse ends with the Arabic letter mim, a style called mimiya. "The 10 chapters of the Burda" comprise.
- On Lyrical Love Yearning
- On Warnings about the Caprices of the Self
- On the Praise of the Prophet
- On his Birth
- On his Miracles
- On the Exalted Stature & Miraculous Merits of the Qur'an
- On the Ascension of the Prophet
- On the Chivalrous Struggle of Allah's Messenger
- On Seeking Intercession through the Prophet
- On Intimate Discourse & the Petition of One’s State
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