The Burda of Imam Busiri - The Poem of the Cloak
Booklet and 3 CD set
Performed by the Fez Singers Featuring Bennis Abddelfettah
English translation and introduction by Hamza Yusuf.
Calligraphy by Mohamed Zakariyya.
Produced by Abdullateef Whiteman.
Sandala Ltd
(from the Introduction) I was compelled to translate The Burda after a trip to Mauritania in which I realized it was everywhere, on everyone's tongue, always present, always ready to ignite the instant, alter the ambience, enhance the state, bring the presence of the beloved into the room, the tent or wherever we happened to be. Sitting once with my teacher Abd Allah Ould Ahmadna, I heard for the first time a line from Imam Busiri, "If Allah places a people in the service of the serene, then they too become serene." As those words flowed from the tongue of my serene teacher, I realized in that moment the reason for my existence; my soul was branded with the power of those words forever. That is Imam al-Busiri.
I have heard the Burda many times in many places. In Morocco, I was transported to another world, a perfect world free of sin, free of vice, free of temptation and upon leaving the gathering, I felt as if was once again, we were exiled from the Garden. I have seen Yemenis filled with the same joyful spirit singing in their own unique way like innocent children freed from fear while praising the one who on the day all have fear shows none. Once in Madina, two Sudanese sang a section in a way that brought the poem back to its home, Africa. While it is sung in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Turkey, Kosovo, Chechnya, Bosnia, even in China, it is and always will be from Africa. It is like Africa; as deep as the oceans that surround her, as powerful as her Nile, as vast as her Sahara and containing as many lights as a starry desert night in Niger.
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf was born in Washington State and raised in Northern California. In 1977, he became Muslim and subsequently traveled to the Muslim world and studied for ten years in the U. A. E., Saudi Arabia, as well as North and West Africa. He received teaching licenses in various Islamic subjects from several well-known scholars in various countries.
After a ten years of studies abroad, he returned to the USA and took degrees in Religious Studies and Health Care. He has traveled all over the world giving talks on Islam. He also founded Zaytuna Institute which has established an international reputation for presenting a classical picture of Islam in the West and which is dedicated to the revival of traditional study methods and the sciences of Islam. Shaykh Hamza is the first American lecturer to teach in Morocco's prestigious and oldest University, the Kairoiuin in Fes.
In addition, he has translated into modern English several classical Arabic traditional texts and poems.
