Themes and motifs in Abdullah - Salahudin Uššaki's talkhis on Al-Busiri's Qasida Al Burda

Abstract

The author analyses Abdullah Salahuddin Uššaki Bošnjak’s Tahmis on al- Busiri’s poem Qaṣīda al-Burda. His research is based on the manuscript entitled Tahmis-i Terceme-i Kaside-i Burde kept in the Faith manuscript collection of the Süleymaniye Library. The manuscript consists of 52 pages and 785 verses in Arabic and Ottoman. Parallel with the Arabic text of the Tahmis, Uššaki also gave a translation in Ottoman on the left margins of the manuscript.

Given that the poem belongs to the tahmis genre or a “meta-poem” of al-Busiri’s celebrated Qaṣīda al-Burda, the article analyses the relation between al-Busiri’s verses as a prototext and Uššaki’s verses as metatext. The relation between the two texts is viewed from poetic and aesthetic aspects. In this regard special attention is paid to the way the two poets understand the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).

These two poets belong to two different erasal-Busiri to the 13th century and to Arabic literature, while Uššaki lived in the18th century and belonged to Turkish literature. Major research results were expected considering the huge time span between the two poets and different traditions.