Personal Narrative Of A Pilgrimage To Al Madinah And Meccah Volume 2

Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah - Volume 2 by Richard Francis Burton The Bayt al-Ansari, or descendants of Abu Ayyub, a most noble race whose tree ramifies through a space of fifteen hundred years. They keep the keys of the Kuba Mosque, and are Imams in the Harim, but the family is no longer wealthy or powerful. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

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Richard Francis Burton (1821-90) was a British orientalist, soldier, spy, diplomat, and explorer best known for his travels in Arabia, Africa, and India. He was born in Torquay, on the southern coast of England, and was raised in France and Italy. It was there that he began to show his exceptional talent with languages by learning Latin, Greek, Italian, and French before he was 20. After two years at Oxford, he was dismissed on disciplinary grounds. He went on to join the British Army in India, where he served as an intelligence officer. Disguised as a Pashtun Muslim and supported by the Royal Geographical Society, in 1853 Burton undertook a hajj journey to the two Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina. His two-volume Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to el Medinah and Meccah recounts that journey. Burton spent years in preparation, mostly during his time in India. The journey first took him from England to Alexandria in Egypt, and further to Cairo, Suez, and Yanbu. From there he travelled to Medina and Mecca. Although Burton was not the first non-Muslim to perform the hajj, the accuracy of his well-documented account, including his measurements of the Kaaba in Mecca and his Victorian-era observations on Muslims (especially his copious notes on manners), brought him immediate fame. Burton begins the first volume of his work with a famed line of verse on cavalierism by the Arab poet al-Mutanabbi (915-65 AD): "I am well known to the night, the steeds, and the desert / the sword and [the guest], the paper and the pen." A controversial figure during his lifetime and a prolific writer and translator, Burton left behind 43 volumes of writing on his journeys and 30 volumes of translations, including of sensual books such the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui, and the Arabian Nights. He died in Trieste, in what was then Austria-Hungary.

Reproduction of the original: Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah by Richard F. Burton

Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah - Volume 2, a classical book, has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.