Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 01 (of 10)The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 01 (of 10) This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 01 (of 10) Translator: Sir Richard Francis Burton Release date: February 20, 2016 [eBook #51252] Most recently updated: May 21, 2025 Language: English Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51252 Credits: Produced by Richard Tonsing, Richard Hulse and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF THE THOUSAND NIGHTS AND A NIGHT - VOLUME 01 (OF 10) *** [Illustration] [Illustration] "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_." [Illustration] _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 [Illustration] 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= OF 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." It may be permitted me also to note that this translation is a natural outcome of my Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah. Arriving at Aden in the (so-called) winter of 1852, I put up with my old and dear friend, Steinhaeuser, to whose memory this volume is inscribed; and, when talking over Arabia and the Arabs, we at once came to the same conclusion that, while the name of this wondrous treasury of Moslem folk-lo |