Tales from the 1001 Nights

Soldier, explorer, anthropologist, linguist, diplomat, and translator-Sir RichardFrancis Burton lived a life that would seem unbelievable in a work of fiction. He was born March 19, 1821, in Torquay, England, largely self educated, and dismissed from Oxford for the unconventional behaviours.

In 1842 he joined the British army in India, where he added his stock of languages; he eventually mastered 25. In 1853, disguised as an Indian Muslim he made a pilgrimage Mecca and wrote about it in A PersonalNarrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah (1856).  Book by Buston, Sir Richard (Translator)