Muhammad, full of God’s grace,
Shines on his wedding day as on the day of his birth!
The day God sent the Prophet to the Earth
To be born of Amina, flooding the world with light and truth,
Only He knew of this wondrous wedding day.
He saw the bride, who would long for the Prophet,
She would desire their unity to be sweet as honey
But also to be strong as steel
God planned it so, and so it is!
If only the admirer, Fonseca, should be so blessed as you!
A Description
Muhammad is worshipped across the Muslim world as the Prophet, and different cultures have their own ways of revering him. Poetry is an extremely well established and respected form of art in the Muslim world and therefore there are many styles of poetry written to honor the Prophet. “In Praise of Muhammad: Sindhi and Urdu Poems” gives two such examples. Muhammad may not be worshipped as a god or as Jesus, but he is the closest human to the divine and his life is seen as the perfect example of a human life and how to conduct oneself. In the Sindhi tradition, the “maulud,” meaning “newborn child,” becomes a type of poem that contains a few lyrical lines on the Prophet’s birth, life, and character. They also often mention his marriage and the virahini, a symbol representing a young love struck yearning woman, who in this case is his bride. This maulud is five to ten verses long and includes the “thal,” which is the beginning verse that is used as a refrain. In the last line the writer references themselves in some kind of supplication to the Prophet. I have included all the most important elements in my maulud. I thought I could even combine the Prophet’s birth, wedding, and the virahini to create a little narrative of how God knew from the day he was born that his bride would yearn for him and they should be married on a spectacular day. The maulud is not just a poem about the Prophet, but really an important way of relaying his story, the same way that the Swahili myths and legends relay his story in their own unique way, so that the Prophet will never be forgotten through generations.