“TO THE PURE ALL THINGS ARE PURE.”
(Puris omnia para)

—_Arab Proverb._

“Niuna corrotta mente intese mai sanamente parole.”

—”_Decameron_”—_conclusion_.

“Erubuit, posuitque meum Lucretia librum
Sed coram Bruto. Brute! recede, leget.”

—_Martial._

“Mieulx est de ris que de larmes escripre,
Pour ce que rire est le propre des hommes.”

—RABELAIS.

“The pleasure we derive from perusing the Thousand-and-One Stories makes
us regret that we possess only a comparatively small part of these truly
enchanting fictions.”

—CRICHTON’S “_History of Arabia_.”

_A PLAIN AND LITERAL TRANSLATION OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS.
NOW ENTITULED_

_THE BOOK OF THE_
=Thousand Nights and a Night=

_WITH INTRODUCTION EXPLANATORY NOTES ON THE
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF MOSLEM MEN AND A
TERMINAL ESSAY UPON THE HISTORY OF THE
NIGHTS_

VOLUME I.

BY
RICHARD F. BURTON

PRINTED BY THE BURTON CLUB FOR PRIVATE
SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

Shammar Edition

Limited to one thousand numbered sets, of which this is

Number _547_

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

=Inscribed to the Memory=

MY LAMENTED FRIEND

=John Frederick Steinhaeuser,=

(CIVIL SURGEON, ADEN)

WHO

A QUARTER OF A CENTURY AGO

ASSISTED ME IN THIS TRANSLATION.

THE TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD.

This work, laborious as it may appear, has been to me a labour of love,
an unfailing source of solace and satisfaction. During my long years of
official banishment to the luxuriant and deadly deserts of Western
Africa, and to the dull and dreary half-clearings of South America, it
proved itself a charm, a talisman against ennui and despondency.
Impossible even to open the pages without a vision starting into view;
without drawing a picture from the pinacothek of the brain; without
reviving a host of memories and reminiscences which are not the common
property of travellers, however widely they may have travelled. From my
dull and commonplace and “respectable” surroundings, the Jinn bore me at
once to the land of my predilection, Arabia, a region so familiar to my
mind that even at first sight, it seemed a reminiscence of some by-gone
metempsychic life in the distant Past. Again I stood under the
diaphanous skies, in air glorious as æther, whose every breath raises
men’s spirits like sparkling wine. Once more I saw the evening star
hanging like a solitaire from the pure front of the western firmament;
and the after-glow transfiguring and transforming, as by magic, the
homely and rugged features of the scene into a fairy-land lit with a
light which never shines on other soils or seas. Then would appear the
woollen tents, low and black, of the true Badawin, mere dots in the
boundless waste of lion-tawny clays and gazelle-brown gravels, and the
camp-fire dotting like a glow-worm the village centre. Presently,
sweetened by distance, would be heard the wild weird song of lads and
lasses, driving or rather pelting, through the gloaming their sheep and
goats; and the measured chant of the spearsmen gravely stalking behind
their charge, the camels; mingled with the bleating of the flocks and
the bellowing of the humpy herds; while the rere-mouse flitted overhead
with his tiny shriek, and the rave of the jackal resounded through
deepening glooms, and—most musical of music—the palm-trees answered the
whispers of the night-breeze with the softest tones of falling water.

And then a shift of scene. The Shaykhs and “white-beards” of the tribe
gravely take their places, sitting with outspread skirts like hillocks
on the plain, as the Arabs say, around the camp-fire, whilst I reward
their hospitality and secure its continuance by reading or reciting a
few pages of their favourite tales. The women and children stand
motionless as silhouettes outside the ring; and all are breathless with
attention; they seem to drink in the words with eyes and mouths as well
as with ears. The most fantastic flights of fancy, the wildest
improbabilities, the most impossible of impossibilities, appear to them
utterly natural, mere matters of every-day occurrence. They enter
thoroughly into each phase of feeling touched upon by the author: they
take a personal pride in the chivalrous nature and knightly prowess of
Taj al-Mulúk; they are touched with tenderness by the self-sacrificing
love of Azízah; their mouths water as they hear of heaps of untold gold
given away in largesse like clay; they chuckle with delight every time a
Kázi or a Fakír—a judge or a reverend—is scurvily entreated by some
Pantagruelist of the Wilderness; and, despite their normal solemnity and
impassibility, all roar with laughter, sometimes rolling upon the ground
till the reader’s gravity is sorely tried, at the tales of the garrulous
Barber and of Ali and the Kurdish Sharper. To this magnetising mood the
sole exception is when a Badawi of superior accomplishments, who
sometimes says his prayers, ejaculates a startling “Astaghfaru’llah”—I
pray Allah’s pardon!—for listening, not to Carlyle’s “downright lies,”
but to light mention of the sex whose name is never heard amongst the
nobility of the Desert.

Nor was it only in Arabia that the immortal Nights did me such notable
service: I found the wildlings of Somali-land equally amenable to its
discipline; no one was deaf to the charm and the two women-cooks of my
caravan, on its way to Harar, were incontinently dubbed by my men
“Shahrazad” and “Dinazad.”