The Mantle Adorned

The Mantle Adorned is a completely new translation of the Burda ('Mantle Poem') of Imam Sharaf al-Din al-Busiri (d.1297). Abdal Hakim Murad has consulted the classical commentaries to produce this clear and careful English version.
Hardback.  180 pages.

Murad has added to each verse a further verse of poetry by another poet, which expresses a similar sentiment of love for the Blessed Prophet. The book therefore serves as the best collection currently available in English of poems in praise of the Seal of the Messengers, may Allah bless him and give him peace. Poets represented include Rumi, Attar, Ibn Hazm, Nanotvi, Yahya Parkinson, Rilke, and many more.

Busiri (Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad ibn Sa'id ul-Busiri) (1211–1294) was an Egyptian poet who wrote under the patronage of Ibn Hinna, the vizier. The most famous of his poems is the present work "Poem of the Mantle". It is entirely in praise of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, who cured the poet of paralysis by appearing to him in a dream and wrapping him in a mantle. The poem is considered sacred, even in the poet's lifetime. Up to the present time its verses are used as amulets; recited at births and other joyous occasions; it has been frequently edited and made the basis for other poems.

Abdal Hakim Murad was born in London in 1960. He is the author of several translations from Arabic, including volumes of the classic Revival of the Religious Sciences by Imam al-Ghazali.

The translation includes a foreword by Professor Recep Senturk of the Centre for Islamic Studies (ISAM), Istanbul.

In The Mantle Adorned, each line of the poem appears on a separate page. The calligraphy, in a clear and readable Naskh style, is the work of one of today’s leading Islamic calligraphers, Betül Kırkan.

Betul was born in Istanbul in 1971. After graduating in 1990 from Bakırkoy Islamic College (Imam-Hatip Lisesi), she was apprenticed to the master-calligrapher Huseyin Kutlu, receiving her ijaza in Naskh and Thuluth in 1995. The winner of several international calligraphy prizes, she presently works in the Library of Turkish-Islamic Arts in Istanbul.

Every page of The Mantle Adorned is illuminated in magnificent full colour and gold ink by the leading artist Ersan Percem. Born in Erzincan in 1976, Ersan graduated in 2001 from the Department of Traditional Turkish Handicraft Arts in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Marmara University. Since then he has taught at Sakarya University and Selcuk University. As well as excelling in the arts of illumination, he is an authority on marbling, gilding and calligraphy.