Adli Yacubi

Category: Poetry

  • Joburg Remembers Too: From Gaajah to Burdah

    Joburg Remembers Too: From Gaajah to Burdah

    From a family Gaajah in Florida North to the chorus of the Burdah at Houghton Mosque, Joburg’s dhikr carries both intimacy and grandeur. This Rabiʿ al-Awwal, in Heritage Month, I was reminded that memory does not belong to Cape Town alone. It stretches wider — across towns, valleys, mosques and homes — carried in the…

  • The Prophet in Our Veins: On the Scent, Sound, and Song of Cape Devotion

    The Prophet in Our Veins: On the Scent, Sound, and Song of Cape Devotion

    Rabi al-Awwal has entered our skies. In Cape Town, remembrance is not reserved for the minbar — it pulses in the scent of rosewater, in quiet salawāt whispered in traffic, and in songs sung without instruments. This reflection explores three threads of Prophetic remembrance — as a guide in our struggles, a wellspring of longing,…

  • The Stormborne Sisters: A Karoo Creation Tale

    The Stormborne Sisters: A Karoo Creation Tale

    In the Karoo, three koppies rise like ribs from Mother Earth’s chest — storm-sisters who absorbed a comet’s grief and became stone. This is their myth. Their vanishing. Their voice beneath the silence.

  • The Mother Tongue of Tasbih: Afrikaans, Islam, and the Echoes of Resistance

    The Mother Tongue of Tasbih: Afrikaans, Islam, and the Echoes of Resistance

    “Os wiet dat ’n taal is ook ’n houvās.” We know that a language is also a holding — like a salomie wrapped in a roti: not to preserve perfection, but to keep the inside warm. Spiced, sacred, messy, surviving. This blog is my offering — a prayer for our tongue, our tasbīḥ, and the…

  • Comfort of Our Eyes…

    Comfort of Our Eyes…

    In a world where sermons often speak to the youth or about parents, this khutbah speaks for the child. Inspired by the memory of Jayden-Lee Meek — an 11-year-old who died under tragic, preventable circumstances — this reflection draws from the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ tenderness towards children and confronts the silence that allows harm to…

  • The Legend of the Silver Tree

    The Legend of the Silver Tree

    “Not brought by botanists. Not named by settlers. But gifted by a porcupine, Planted by Gubi and Nori, Rooted in fire, story, and seed.” A tale passed down through generations — from mother to child, from silence to word. Set beneath Table Mountain, this is the story of the Silver Tree, the river Camissa, and…

  • The Ratib al-Haddad: A Symphony of Spiritual Resilience

    The Ratib al-Haddad: A Symphony of Spiritual Resilience

    Discover the Ratib al-Haddad’s movements, history, and meaning, from slavery to anti-apartheid resistance in the Cape, told as a spiritual symphony.

  • Africans in Early Islam: A Celebration of Courage, Dignity, and Faith

    Africans in Early Islam: A Celebration of Courage, Dignity, and Faith

    From the first martyr to the first mu’adhin, from the refuge of Najāshi to the dignity of Barakah, Africans shaped Islam from its earliest breath. This is their story — woven into the Ka‘bah, the adhan, and the footsteps of Hajj itself. More than history, it is a revolution of faith and equality.

  • Braima Winter: The Man Who Read the Weather and Raised Us with Words

    Braima Winter: The Man Who Read the Weather and Raised Us with Words

    A Turkish Delight of memory, scent, and softness — this is a tribute to the ones who raised us, laughed with us, stitched us together. From Braima Winter’s cloud-watching wisdom to High Rugaya’s cinnamon mercy, this is how we remember. With bricks. With books. With soup.

  • Scroll of the Sorbaan & Medora – Worn in Sound, Washed in Meaning

    Scroll of the Sorbaan & Medora – Worn in Sound, Washed in Meaning

    A Cape Qur’anic remembrance: children once walked the streets of Bo-Kaap and District Six, dressed in sorbaans and medoras, reciting the final verses of the Qur’an. This was the Tamat — not memorised, but recited with presence. A covenant, a celebration, and a sacred procession into the heart of memory.