The Kasidah

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.

In the Oxford English Dictionary entry on "kasidah", the form is defined as a classical Arabic or Persian panegyric in verse, which begins with a reference to encountering a deserted campground, followed by a lament, and a prayer to one's traveling companions to halt while the memory of the departed dwellers is invoked.

In adapting the style, techniques and ideas of the classical Sufi masters (Hafez, Omar Khayyam), Burton produced a sort of "spiritual autobiography" in The Kasidah.

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.

In Sufism he finds a system of application to misguided faiths 'which will prove them all right, and all wrong; which will reconcile their differences; will unite past creeds; will account for the present and will anticipate the future with a continuous and uninterrupted development.'"