The Genre of the Mawlid Narrative in the Mid-12th h./18th Century as Exemplified by al-Barzanjī

Abstract

Among the works of Arabic literature concerning the genre of Mawlid, certainly al-Barzanjī’s Mawlid is a text that has achieved great popularity and spread to large parts of the Islamic world. Indeed, emphasising the miraculous and marvellous aspects of the life of the Prophet until his death, it has for longer than three centuries been a reference text of religious devotion throughout the Muslim world. Therefore, the purpose of the present essay is a systematic analysis of its contents, specifically across the different sections of the prose text (nathr) of al-Barzanjī’s Mawlid, with particular attention to all the Qur’ānic references, along with those related to the Sunna and al-Sīra al-nabawiyya.