Al-Futūḥāt al-Maghribiyya · The Moroccan Revelations

Introduction to Al-Futūḥāt al-Maghribiyya, a poem by Shaykh Muḥammad al-Yaqoubi in praise of the Prophet ﷺ.

الفُتُوحَاتُ المَغْرِبِيَّة

Al-Futūḥāt al-Maghribiyya — The Moroccan Revelations

Al-Futūḥāt al-Maghribiyya is a poem of two hundred and fifty-six lines composed by Shaykh Muḥammad al-Yaqoubi in praise of the Prophet ﷺ, our master Muhammad. The author completed it in Rabat in the month of Rabīʿ al-Awwal 1440 AH, and published it in London in 2020. He rendered it into English himself, under the title The Moroccan Revelations.

The title carries a note of gratitude. Futūḥāt are spiritual openings, the gifts God grants His servant that loosen in him what was bound — a sense no single English word quite covers, which is why the title is kept here in its Arabic form. Shaykh Muḥammad al-Yaqoubi traces these openings to the years that followed his move from Syria to Morocco: the fruitfulness of that period, attested by the many works he composed there, appeared to him as a grace of which this poem seeks to be the grateful trace. He offered it as a gift to His Majesty King Mohammed VI, in recognition of his attachment to the Prophet ﷺ and of his support for the celebration of the Mawlid.

The number of lines is not arbitrary. Two hundred and fifty-six is the numerical value of the word nūr, "light" — a divine name, and one of the names of the Prophet ﷺ. The poem is thus built to the measure of what it sings: its very form recites the name it celebrates.

The author arranged these lines in ten chapters, ordered by subject. The movement of the whole runs from the most intimate to the most universal: attachment to the Prophet ﷺ and the yearning for his company open the poem (chapters I and II); then come the portrait of his character, the eminence of his rank, and his beauty (chapters III to V); then a meditation on the honour poetry receives in praising him (chapter VI); and finally the praise God Himself bestows upon His Messenger, the love owed to him, the seeking of his intercession, and the prayer upon him, which closes the whole (chapters VII to X).

The poem stands in a long line. From Ḥassān ibn Thābit — may God be pleased with him —, the poet of the Prophet ﷺ in his own lifetime, to Imam al-Būṣīrī, Imam al-Ṣarṣarī, Imam Ibn Jābir the Andalusian and, nearer to us, Shaykh Yūsuf al-Nabhānī, generations of poets have devoted their art to this love. Shaykh Muḥammad al-Yaqoubi takes his place among them as an heir: he has himself dedicated to the Prophet ﷺ more than four thousand lines across some sixty poems, several of which reach nine hundred lines.

Within that body of work, however, this poem holds a place of its own. The author speaks less as a panegyrist than as a lover: what he describes is the effect of that love upon his own heart — the attachment, the absence, the burning, the hope of meeting. The poem opens on a heart laid down at a threshold, and closes on a thousand thousand greetings sent from the heart of every ardent lover. Between those two gestures the whole book is held.

In the present edition each line is given in its vocalised Arabic text, its two hemistichs set according to the direction of reading — the ṣadr on the right, the ʿajuz on the left — with the rendering placed beneath. The metre and the rhyme, which in Arabic carry the poem from end to end on a single assonance in -īhi, are not reproduced; fidelity to the sense has been preferred. Technical terms of religious language have been kept in transliteration, with a gloss at first use.

Prepared by L'Héritage du Prophète ﷺ. Rights to the original work remain reserved to its author and its publisher.