The Marriage of Abu Lahab — Translation by N.M. Rashed

N. M. Rashed. "The Marriage of Abu Lahab." Translation of N. M. Rashed's "Abū Lahab kī shādī". Trans. N. M. Rashed. 2 pp. 2 sheets. 8.5 x 11". Typewritten. English. Box 2. Folder 5: English translations of NMR poetry and letters to editors. 001. Digitized by Zahra Sabri. Catalogued by Pasha M. Khan. Donated (2015) by Yasmin Rashed Hassan to the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal. Full text here.

This is a typewritten copy of Rashed's own English translation of his poem "Abū Lahab kī shādī." The Urdu original of the first stanza shown above is as follows:

شبِ زفافِ ابو لہب تھی، مگر خدایا وہ کیسی شب تھی،
ابو لہب کی دلہن جب آئی تو سر پہ ایندھن، گلے میں
سانپوں کے ہار لائی، نہ اس کو مشاطّگی سے مطلب
نہ مانگ غازہ، نہ رنگ روغن، گلے میں سانپوں
کے ہار اس کے، تو سر پہ ایندھن!
خدایا کیسی شب زفافِ ابو لہب تھی!¹

For an online version of the complete poem (with the option of reading in the Urdu, Hindi, or Roman script, and other useful tools), see "Abū Lahab kī shādī" on Rekhta.org.

The bride and groom will be familiar figures to many Muslims. Abu Lahab was an uncle of the Prophet who opposed Islam in its earliest years and tormented his nephew with various acts. His wife Umm Jamil was equally malicious; she is said to have cast thorns in Muhammad's path. Abu Lahab is the only individual explicitly cursed in the Qur'an. Arberry's translation of Sūrat al-Masad reads:

Perish the hands of Abu Lahab, and perish he!
His wealth avails him not, neither what he has earned;
he shall roast at a flaming fire
and his wife, the carrier of the firewood,
upon her neck a rope of palm-fibre.²

In Rashed's imagining of the wedding, something like the characteristics of Umm Jamil mentioned in the Qur'an are already present as she enters the scene as a bride. She carries firewood, and in place of a necklace she sports not palm-fibre but a mass of snakes.

The prolific Rashed scholar Prof. Muhammad Fakhar ul-Haq Noori of Punjab University has written about Rashed’s translations of his own work in his essay "Rāshid kī nazmeñ, Rāshed ke tarājim" (in Mutāli‘ah-i Rāshid. Faisalabad: Misāl Publishers, 2010.), and in Nūn Mīm Rāshid kī nazmoñ ke angrezī tarājim. Faisalabad: Misāl Publishers, 2013.

Keywords: #Abu_Lahab_ki_shadi, #La_=_insan, #NMR's_translation, #poetry, #Quran, #translation, #typewritten

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1 Rashed, N. M. Lā = insān. 1st ed. Lahore: Al-Misāl, 1969. pp. 51-52. For a published version of this translation, see Noori, Fakhar ul-Haqq. Nūm Mīm Rāshid kī nazmeñ aur un kī Angrezī tarājim. Faisalabad: Misāl, 2013. pp. 215-216.
2 Arberry, A. J. The Koran Interpreted. London: Allen & Unwin, 1955. Ch. 111.