من كنت مولاه فهذا عليٌ مولاه‎

[MonsieurGonzalito]

Friends,

In Hindustani songs of Sufi inspiration, this opening is popular. It comes from a poem attributed to Amir Khusraw.
I have a couple of questions regarding the structure of this sentence (since I don't know Arabic).

The translation usually given in "Of (whosever) I be (subjunctive) master, (of) this one too Ali (is) master".

My questions are:
- كُنْتُ is some sort of Arabic subjunctive of "to be", for the first person? ~= "Of whosever I may be ..."?
- the relative pronoun "whosever" is elided? Is that normal in Arabic?
- the "of" in the second part of the sentence is also elided? Again, is that normal?

Thanks in advance for any information.

 

[Ihsiin]

It in fact comes from a declaration made by Prophet Muhammed at غدير خم. The translation should read something like: "Whoever I am his master, Ali is also his master." Regarding your specific questions:

- كنتُ means 'I was', though in Classical Arabic the perfect tense is not used solely for past actions, but is also used in declarative statements, so it can also be understood as 'I am'.
- For questions 2 and 3, I think you're getting confused around من - in this case this is مَن meaning 'who', not مِن meaning 'from'. Thus من كنت مولاه = who I am his master.