Books with author Sir Richard F. Burton

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS (19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian and African languages. Motivated by his love of adventure, Burton got the approval of the Royal Geographical Society for an exploration of the area and he gained permission from the Board of Directors of the British East India Company to take leave from the army. His seven years in India gave Burton a familiarity with the customs and behavior of Muslims and prepared him to attempt a Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca and, in this case, Medina). It was this journey, undertaken in 1853, which first made Burton famous.

This was written by Sir Richard Burton under the pseudonym of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî after his return from Mecca in 1854. It contains references to 19th Century scientific and philosophical concepts. Nonetheless, it is a Sufi text to the core, and one of the few instances of Burton writing in the first person about his belief system, even if it is under the cloak of a different name. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a Kasidah is a classical Arabic or Persian panegyric, which must begin with a reference to a forsaken campground, followed by a lament, and a prayer to ones comrades to halt while the memory of the departed dwellers is invoked. The same rhyme has to run through the entire composition, no matter how long the poem is.

Full of mischief, valor, ribaldry, and romance, The Arabian Nights has enthralled readers for centuries. These are the tales that saved the life of Shahrazad, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage. Beginning an enchanting story each evening, Shahrazad always withheld the ending: A thousand and one nights later, her life was spared forever. This volume reproduces the 1932 Modern Library edition, for which Bennett A. Cerf chose the most famous and representative stories from Sir Richard F. Burton's multivolume translation, and includes Burton's extensive and acclaimed explanatory notes. These tales, including Alaeddin; or, the Wonderful Lamp, Sinbad the Seaman and Sinbad the Landsman, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, have entered into the popular imagination, demonstrating that Shahrazad's spell remains unbroken.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

"The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî" by Sir Richard Francis Burton. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

This volume and its successor (Nos. i. and ii.) contain Mr. John Payne’s Tales from the Arabic; his three tomes, being included in my two. The stories are taken from the Breslau Edition where they are distributed among the volumes between Nos. iv. and xii., and from the Calcutta fragment of 1814. I can say little for the style of the story-stuff contained in this Breslau text, which has been edited with phenomenal incuriousness. Many parts are hopelessly corrupted, whilst at present we have no means of amending the commissions and of supplying the omissions by comparison with other manuscripts. The Arabic is not only faulty, but dry and jejune, comparing badly with that of the “Thousand Nights and a Night,” as it appears in the Macnaghten and the abridged Bulak Texts. Sundry of the tales are futile; the majority has little to recommend it, and not a few require a diviner rather than a translator. Yet they are valuable to students as showing the different sources and the heterogeneous materials from and of which the great Saga-book has been compounded. Some are, moreover, striking and novel, especially parts of the series entitled King Shah Bakht and his Wazir Al-Rahwan (pp. 191–355). Interesting also is the Tale of the “Ten Wazirs” (pp. 55–155), marking the transition of the Persian Bakhtiyár-Námeh into Arabic. In this text also and in this only is found Galland’s popular tale “Abou-Hassan; or, the Sleeper Awakened,” which I have entitled “The Sleeper and the Waker.”

‘The genius of Eastern nations;’ says an established and respectable authority; ‘was; from the earliest times; much turned towards invention and the love of fiction. The Indians; the Persians; and the Arabians; were all famous for their fables. Amongst the ancient Greeks we hear of the Ionian and Milesian tales; but they have now perished; and; from every account that we hear of them; appear to have been loose and indelicate.’ Similarly; the classical dictionaries define ‘Milesiæ fabulæ’ to be ‘licentious themes;’ ‘stories of an amatory or mirthful nature;’ or ‘ludicrous and indecent plays.’ M. Deriége seems indeed to confound them with the ‘Mœurs du Temps’ illustrated with artistic gouaches; when he says; ‘une de ces fables milésiennes; rehaussées de peintures; que la corruption romaine recherchait alors avec une folle ardeur.’