Abstract
An In Verse Translation of Qaseedah al-Burdah by an Unknown Translator
A deep love of the Hz. Prophet has conduced the emergence of many literary genres such as mawlid, siyer (biography of the Prophet), mirajiyyah, hilye, forty hadiths, na’t, and poetic or prosaic artworks that center on the Prophet have been created in Islamic literature. Ka’b ibn Züheyr’s (d. 24/645?) famous poem that starts with the statement Bânet Su’âd and known in the literature as Qaseedah al-Burdah is based on the cardigan given as a present by Hz. Prophet, and has a remarkable importance in terms of guiding the type of na’t. The poem, el-Kevâkibü’d-Dürriyye fî Medhi Hayri’l-Beriyye which was inspired by the aforementioned qasida in verse by the Egyptian poet Bûsîrî (d. 696/1297?), who lived almost six centuries after Ka’b was also mentioned by the same name in Islamic literature. It succeeded in surpassing Ka’b’s poem in terms of its attention-grabbing writing style and its literary power. Thanks to its rich content and lyrical style, Qaseedah al-Burdah is greatly loved and has been translated into several languages. This famous qasida attracted great interest in Turkish literature, and several poets have written in this genre in the hope of being able to attain Hz. Prophet’s intercession (shafa’ah). The Qaseedah al-Burdah has been translated into Turkish by many famous poets such as Abdurrahim Karahisarî, Ahmed-i Rıdvan, Kemal Paşa-zâde, Le’âlî, Şemseddin Sivasî, and Nahîfî. Additionally, the Qaseedah al-Burdah has many other translations whose translators are unknown. This study will discuss an in-verse translation of Bûsîrî’s Qaseedah al-Burdah, of which the author and date are unknown. In the artwork, whose only identified copy was included in B3535 of the Beyazıt Public Library, the prosody of fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilâtün fâ’ilün was used differently than in the poem. Although the translator took a significant part of the rhyme words from the reference text, he used a more easily comprehendible style compared to its processor.
Keywords
Ka’b b. Züheyr, Bûsîrî, Qaseedah al-Burdah, In Verse Translation.