al-Qawafi al-Nadiyya fi al-Sira al-Muhammadiyya
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- Dar al-Hadaf lil-Nashr wal-Tawzi'
al-Qawafi al-Nadiyya fi al-Sira al-Muhammadiyya (The Fresh Rhymes on the Muhammadan Biography, also titled al-Qawafi al-Nadiyya fi al-Sira al-Nabawiyya) is a didactic poetic versification (urjuza) of the life of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ by the contemporary Egyptian poet and author Muhammad Jawda Fayyad .
Composition and Purpose
According to the foreword by 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman Adam, Fayyad spent twelve years composing, revising, and verifying the work before bringing it to its final poetic form . The author drew upon authoritative classical sources of prophetic biography and hadith, which he documented at the end of the book .
In his introduction, Fayyad explained that he chose to render the prophetic biography into verse in order to make its events, lessons, and moral insights accessible and easily memorized . He emphasized preserving the precision of historical facts, names, and occurrences without alteration .
Poetic Structure and Method
The poem is composed in the classical rajaz meter (bahr al-rajaz) . Structurally, the narrative is arranged chronologically into distinct episodes, with individual headings for each event and varying end-rhymes across different sections .
In his introduction on poetic technique, Fayyad detailed his adherence to prosodic conventions, noting his use of the letter alif as a ridf (the vowel of prolongation preceding the rhyming consonant, rawiyy) and fixing the wasl as the letter ya' produced by saturating the vocalic marker (kasra) on the rawiyy .
Scope and Content
The versification opens with a section on the conditions of the Arabs prior to Islam (Ahwal al-'Arab qabla al-Islam) . It proceeds through the historical stages and detailed occurrences of the Prophet's life and mission, and concludes with a dedicated treatment of his physical and moral characteristics (shama'il al-Rasul) .
Reception
The work received commendation from Sayf Rajab Qazamil, Professor of Comparative Jurisprudence and former Dean of the Faculty of Sharia and Law in Tanta at Al-Azhar University, who evaluated it as a beneficial urjuza that successfully unites scholarly rigor with literary elegance, highlighting its smooth style and pedagogical utility for students of the Prophet's biography .
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