At the heart of a human being’s circle of love lies the love of Allah. It makes one grow into a mature, dignified, proud and complete being; every kind of beauty stems from it. Next to the love of Allah comes the love of His Messenger. In truth, the path to the love of Allah is bound with the love of His Messenger. The Prophet (pbuh) himself relates in one of his sayings how the love for him is interrelated with faith.

"By Him in Whose Hands my life is, none of you will have faith till he loves me more than his father, his mother, his children and all the other people."  These blessed words uttered by the one who tells of nothing but the truth signify something very deep.

Umar, who was in the presence of the Prophet when he delivered these words, must have felt a tinge of self-love, for he replied: ‘O Allah’s Apostle, I love you truly. But I love myself too.’ Upon hearing this genuine remark, the Prophet turned to him and said: ‘You must love me more than you love yourself.’ This slightest tinge of self-love in Umar’s heart was quickly taken over by the perfection of his faith. He elevated his love to the peaks of faith, to the level desired by Allah’s Apostle for whose love he would sacrifice his own life without hesitation. He felt that the love he had for the Prophet came over his whole being and he said, ‘Now I love you more than I love myself.’ Then Allah’s Apostle said: ‘Now, it’s complete.’

It is usual and natural for human beings to express their love for their loved ones. Especially if this loved one has attributes of grandness and is a uniquely exemplary human being, praising this person with words of admiration and love assumes a value of a different kind. Many poets and orators who were blessed with finest skills of writing and rhetoric wrote poems of praise for the Prophet from which a rich tradition of literature sprang. Examples of this genre including madhiyyah, na’t, qasidah, mawlid, hilyah, mi'râjiyyah, sirah, ghazawat’namah are all precious works of such literature.

Some of these works of praise for our Prophet, who is a mercy to the worlds, were recited in his high presence and some were written after he passed away into the world of eternity.

We need to emphasize here that the poems composed after the passing away of a person to narrate his/her greatness and fine attributes are in fact called risa (elegy). However, poems of the same kind composed for the Prophet were called madih (poems of praise) rather than elegies. Finding this a much more proper description for their poems, poets of elegy, addressed their beloved Prophet as though he was alive with thoughts of his immortality and his deep, unending connection to this life on Earth.

POETS WHO PRAISED PROPHET MUHAMMAD DURING HIS LIFETIME

The following people are among those who praised the Prophet to whom we send blessings and prayers each time his beautiful name is mentioned when his blessed body was still in this world.