Burton, Sir Richard Francis
(1821-1890), British
explorer, Orientalist, and
author, born in Torquay,
Devonshire, and educated at
the University of Oxford.
In 1842 Burton joined the
army of the
East
India Company,
serving in Sindh, India, for
seven years. During this
period he mastered a number
of Eastern languages in
preparation for a series of
journeys and explorations (a
phenomenally talented
linguist, he mastered some
25 languages during his
life). In 1853, disguised as
an Afghan pilgrim, he made
the pilgrimage to
Medina
and
Mecca,
being one of the first
Europeans to enter those
cities. His next journey was
into
Somaliland,
a region that few Europeans
had penetrated. In 1854 he
explored Somaliland with the
British explorer
John
Hanning Speke.
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The Thousand Night and A
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The Thousand Night and A
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After
service in the Crimean War,
Burton returned to Africa in
1856 with Speke, in an
attempt to find the source
of the
Nile.
Together they located
Lake
Tanganyika
in 1858; Speke alone located
Lake Victoria. After 1861
Burton was a member of the
British diplomatic service,
stationed in Fernando Póo;
Santos, Brazil; Damascus;
and Trieste. He was knighted
in 1886.
Burton is also well known
for his definitive
translation (16 vols.,
1885-1888) of the collection
of Oriental tales known as
the
Arabian Nights.
Among his other works are
Personal Narrative of a
Pilgrimage to El Medina and
Mecca (1855), First
Footsteps in East Africa
(1856), The Lake Regions of
Central Africa (1860),
Wanderings in West Africa
(1863), and studies of
Brazil, Paraguay, Syria,
Zanzibar, Etruscan Bologna,
and the Gold Coast. He wrote
43 original books in all, as
well as publishing some 30
translations. Tragically,
after his death in Trieste,
his wife burned the diaries
and journals he had written
over the previous 40 years.