Guardian of the Cloak

Loving and praising the Messenger Muhammad [may Allah bless him and give
him peace] is an essential cornerstone of every believer's faith. This
core facet of the faith has manifested itself in the form of beautiful
poetic eulogy from his own time until today. For centuries, the Qasidah
al-Burdah [The ode of the cloak] of al-Busiri (d. ca. 696 AH) has been
arguably the most popular eulogising ode of this kind. As such, it has
been passed down ever since by successive and countless Muslim
communities, by both layperson and authoritative scholar alike. Recent
history, however, has witnessed grave accusations emerge against the
poem, with claims that some of its lines contain polytheism (shirk) and
disbelief (kufr). This treatise, Guardian of the Cloak, is a thorough
and scholarly response to such charges.

The author of this work was
Shaykh Dawud Ibn Sulayman al-Baghdadi al-Naqshabandi al-Khalidi
al-Shafi'i (1815-1882). He was originally from Baghdad, but travelled
extensively throughout the Muslim world, including the Hejaz,
Syro-Palestine, and Egypt. He authored numerous works, in addition to
this treatise, including a defence of the four Sunni schools of Islamic
law, and a refutation of the Wahhabis and Maḥmud al-Alusi.