This lively poem, one of several hundred collected in Mombasa at the end of the nineteenth century by W.E T AYLOR thanks to Mwalimu SIKUJUWA bin ABDALLAH ai-BAIAWI (Frankl, 1993), is preserved in Volume Ill of the Taylor Papers, now in the library of the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) in London.. lt consists of two versions - both in Arabic script (SOAS MS 47754); the first (Section X, page 4) is probably in the hand of ABDALLAH bin RASHID and has fifteen stanzas, while the second (Section Z, page 161) is in the hand of Mwalimu SIKUJUWA (one of T AYLOR\''s two Swahili teachers) and has twenty-one stanzas .. The entire text of version X is to be found in Z, although not in the same order. Version Z has thus six additional stanzas, and we have had no hesitation in selecting it as the text for this article (the manuscript having been most probably commissioned by TAYLOR).

Aliyetunga kasiga hii, Sheikh Abgallah al-Husni, alikuwa ni mtu maarufu sana Mombasa .. Kwa muda wa myaka arobaini takriban alikuwa akisomesha elimu za gini, msikiti wa Anisa, Mjuwakale; piya alikuwa akitoa waadhi msikiti huu na mahali pengine .. Antunga kasiga mbili za waadhi, moja katika hizo ndiyo hii tuliyoishereheya katika makala haya .. W akati wa kutungwa waadhi huu - 1368 (mwaka 1948 wa milagi) - Mombasa ilikuwa ikali mji wa kiSawahili, yaani mji wa kilsilamu; lakini kulikuwa kuna mabadiliko makubwa yaanza, mabadiliko ambayo mwisho yanaondowa sura za uSawahili katika Mombasa na pwani nzima ya Afrika ya mashariki.

For the students of Swahili poetry that predates the twentieth century (e.g. Muyaka, Alinkishafi, Mwana Kupona, Hamzivva and others) there has always been a dire need for a book which could aid in the understanding of this poetry. This need is made acute by two main reasons: Firstly, classical Swahili poetry is written partly in what is known as Kingozi, an archaic form of language believed by many to be some kind of proto-Swahili. Secondly, the language of old Swahili poetry also incorprates a lot of features from the northern dialects of Swahili (e.g. Kiarnu, Kip ate, Kisiu etc) This combination of archaic Swahili and features from the northern dialects of the language renders both the understanding and the explication of the pre-twentieth Swahili poetry rather difficult for many readers.

In this paper I give biographical sketches of a thirteen century Egyptian poet, best known as al- Busiri, the original composer of Kasidatul Burdah in Arabic and the Swahili translator of the said epic best known as Sheikh Muhammad Mshela, from Shela in Lamu, Kenya. Kasidatul Burdah (The Mantle Ode) or Kasida ya Burudai, in Swahili, is the most famous qasida in the Muslim world. I transcribed this qasida from Arabic to Roman script and analysed it (wa Mutiso 1996). My intention is to show how these poets share the same world view concerning Sufism and Islamic culture in particular