Signed by Willy Pogany and Dhan Gopal Mukerji. Limited edition of 250 copies, of which this is No. 62. With 12 stunning black-and-white illustrations by Pogany.
About the book (from Wikipedia):
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1880) is a long English-language poem written by “Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî”, a pseudonym of the true author, Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890), a well-known British Arabist and explorer. In a note to the reader, Burton claims to be the translator of the poem, to which he gives the English title “Lay of the Higher Law.” It is thus a pseudotranslation, pretending to have had an original Persian text, which never existed. The Kasidah is essentially a distillation of Sufi thought in the poetic idiom of that mystical tradition; Burton had hoped to bring Sufist ideas to the West.
Burton produced a sort of “spiritual autobiography” in The Kasidah. In exploring the limitations of Man’s undeveloped reason, egoism and self-made religions, he sought a fulfillment of individual human destiny. Burton spread a wide net in his allusions and influences. One of his biographers claimed to find elements of Confucius, Longfellow, Plato, Aristotle, Pope, Das Kabir, the Palambal — as well as Edward FitzGerald’s famous 1859 translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam — in the work.
