Arabic Literature in America: Sufi Poems Quoted by Omar ibn Said / Amerika’daki Arapça Literatür: Ömer bin Seyyid’in Atıfta Bulunduğu Tasavvufi Şiirler

One of the most remarkable figures in the history of Islam in America was Omar ibn Said (ʿUmar b. Sayyid, 1770-1863), a Muslim scholar educated in West Africa, who was captured in warfare in his homeland and sold into slavery in America in 1807. For over half a century he lived in North Carolina, enslaved by the prominent Owen family of Fayetteville, and he left behind a small body of writings in Arabic that have for the most part been misread and misunderstood. In this article, I would like to present three short poems quoted by Omar in his writings, which provide a clear indication of the intellectual and theological range of materials that he was familiar with.

Arabic_Literature_in_America_Sufi_PoemsDownload

An Elegy for Gaza

This poem was written to mourn the thousands of people killed in Gaza and millions more whose lives still hang in the balance. The poem references locations in Gaza as well as the Qur’an, the mu’allaqa of Imru’l-Qays, Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “Silence for the Sake of Gaza,”  and Dan Heymann’s anti-apartheid song, “Weeping.”

An Elegy for Gaza

All Muhammad, All the Time: Shaykh Ibrāhim Niāsse’s Prophetic Poetics of Praise in Three Treatises and Poems – Oludamini Ogunnaike

Abstract

“Contemporary poet and scholar Joshua Bennett recently wrote, “If black studies is indeed the rewriting of knowledge itself, an ongoing critique of so-called Western civilization—as Wynter and Robinson and others remind us—then poetry will be absolutely essential. Like the field of black studies more broadly, the teaching of black poetry is not simply additive nor is it a niche concern. Historically poetry is at the center of black social and intellectual life.”

Journal of Sufi Studies Review of Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection

Abstract:

“Scholarship on Islam in Africa has long been in need of comprehensive work on West African madīḥ (i.e. Arabic poetry in praise of the Prophet Muhammad).Recent articles have explicitly called for such an endeavor,󰀱 and the time has come to fully exorcise the “Islam noir” specter󰀲 that has compelled those who write on West African madīḥ to characterize it pejoratively as, in the words of John Hunwick, “often highly stylized, deeply stamped with the metaphors and clichés of Arabic models of former ages … sometimes managing] to rise above the merely imitative or artificial.” Oludamini Ogunnaike’s Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection is remarkably brief, but as the first monograph on the subject in English, it does the necessary work of sketching out the contours of the corpus and demonstrating how it should be understood and appreciated”

Journal_of_Sufi_Studies_Review_of_PoetryDownload

Rumi: Swallowing the Sun – Poems Translated from Persian

Abstract:

“The extraordinary success and influence of certain translations and adap- tations of Persian poetry into western languages – those by Sir William Jones, Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Rückert, August von Platen, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward FitzGerald, Basil Bunting, Robert Bly, Coleman Barks and Dick Davis – makes the burden of the translation past and present especially weighty. A meta-translation question must therefore be resolved in the mind of any would-be Persian translator before they begin: who is the intended audience of this translation, and”

Rumi, Swallowing The Sun (trans. Lewis)Download

The Poetics of Shuhūd – Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Enamored Heart’ and the Composition of Erotic Poetry

Abstract:

“To consider Muḥyī al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-ʿArabī (d.638/1240) as the expounder of his own poetic theory, or at least strands of a theory, opens up exciting opportunities for scholars and admirers of Sufism and Sufi poetry. Not only does Ibn al-ʿArabī have much to say about almost every facet of the sciences held important by Arabic writers in his age, he also usually manages to place each discussion within a larger visionary and ontological framework. That framework (even if reinterpreted and eventually somewhat altered) found a captive audience among thinkers and practitioners of Sufism to such an extent, that it is not difficult to label Ibn al-ʿArabī”

The Poetics Of Shuhud (Zargar)Download


Ahmad Ghazali, Inspirations from the World of Pure Spirits (trans. Pourjavady)

Abstact:

“The present volume is a complete translation of the Sawani!J, written by the Persian Sufi master Ahmad Ghazzali with a commentary by the translator. The fame of the author, as A.J. Arberry rightly states, “has been overshadowed by that of his illustrious brother” 1 Abu Hamid Muhammad Ghazzili (4-50/I058-505/1 l I l). The exact date of Ahmad’s birth is not known, but we know that he was only a few years younger than his brother, and died fifteen years after him in 520/1126. He spent most of his life preaching in mosques“

Ahmad Ghazali, Inspirations From The World Of Pure Spirits (trans. Pourjavady)Download

Al-Hikam (Sufi Aphorisms) of Ibn ‘Ata Allah Al-Iskandari

The Wine Song (Khamriyyah) of Ibn Al-Farid

The Wine Song of Ibn Farid

Shaykh Umar Ibn al-Farid was an Egyptian scholar of Islamic law, and a teacher of Hadith.  His poetry is considered by many to be the the very height of Arabic Sufi literature.