The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî

Sir Richard Francis Burton, the Victorian explorer who walked barefoot through Mecca and spoke more languages than any man of his era, here adopts the voice of a Persian sage on the road to Arabia. The result is a strange, beautiful, and unsettling poem: a Kasidah, or Arabic ode, that unfolds as a meditation on life's fundamental paradoxes. The journey begins at dawn, with camels and horses assembled, a caravan setting off toward the holy city. But this is no mere travelogue. Through the wise wanderer Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî, Burton poses questions that have haunted philosophy for centuries: What is the relationship between happiness and misery? Can self-cultivation ever be sufficient in a world of suffering? What remains when we strip away the illusions we live by? The poem moves through love, death, truth, and the nature of existence itself, offering no easy answers but much hard-won wisdom. Written in 1870 but appearing here in this 1931 edition, it endures because it speaks across cultures and centuries to anyone who has ever stood at the edge of the unknown and wondered what it all means. For readers who loved The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran or the philosophical depth of Eastern poetry.