AFTER my beloved husband had passed away from amongst us, after the
funeral had taken place, and I had settled in England, I began to think
in what way I could render him the most honour. A material Monument to
his memory has already been erected by his countrymen in the shape of a
handsome contribution to the beautiful Mausoleum-tent in stone and
marble to contain his remains; but I also hoped to erect a less
material, but more imperishable, Monument to his name, by making this
unique hero better known to his countrymen by his Works, which have
hitherto not been sufficiently known, not extensively enough published,
and issued perhaps at a prohibitive price. Viewing the long list of
Works written by him between 1842 and 1890, many of which are still
unpublished, I was almost disheartened by the magnitude of the work,
until the Publishers, Messrs. Tylston and Edwards, fully appreciating
the interest with which the British Public had followed my husband's
adventurous career and fearless enterprise, arranged to produce this
uniform Memorial Edition at their own expense.
[p.xvi]Mr. Leonard Smithers, a man of great literary talent and of
indefatigable energy, who admired and collaborated with my husband in
the traduction of Latin Classics for two years before he died, has also
kindly volunteered to be my working assistant and to join with me in
the editing.
My part is to give up all my copyrights, and to search out such papers,
annotations, and latest notes and corrections, as will form the most
complete work; also to write all the Prefaces, and to give every
assistance in my power as Editress.
The Memorial Edition commences with the present "Pilgrimage to
Al-Madinah and Meccah," which will be followed at intervals by others
of my husband's works. Since this "Memorial Edition" was arranged, and
the Prospectus issued, I have parted with the Copyright of my husband's
famous translation of the "Arabian Nights" to the Publishers, and they
are arranging to bring out that work at an early date, and as nearly as
possible uniform in appearance with the Memorial Edition.
The ornamentations on the binding are, a figure of my husband in his
Arab costume, his monogram in Arabic, and, on the back of the book, the
tent which is his tomb.
Both the publishers and myself have to thank Mr. Smithers for the
infinite trouble he has taken in collating the first, second, third and
fourth editions of the ‘Pilgrimage' with Sir Richard's own original
annotated copies. All the lengthy notes and appendices of the first
edition have been retained, and these are supplemented by the notes and
appendices in the later editions, as well as by the author's MS. notes.
He has adopted Sir Richard's latest and
[p.xvii]most correct orthography of Arabic words, and has passed the
sheets through the press. Following my husband's plan in "The Thousand
Nights and a Night," he has put the accents on Arabic words only the
first time of their appearance, to show how they ought to be; thinking
it unnecessary to preserve throughout, what is an eyesore to the reader
and a distress to the printer. So it is with Arabic books,-the accents
are only put for the early student; afterwards, they are left to the
practical knowledge of the reader. All the original coloured
illustrations of the first edition, and also the wood engravings of the
later issues, are reproduced for the first time in one uniform edition.
The map and plans are fac-similies of those in the latest (fourth)
edition. In fact, everything has been done to make this book worthy of
its author and of the public's appreciation.
For those who may not know the import of "A Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah
and Meccah," in 1853, they will not take it amiss when I say that there
are Holy Shrines of the Moslem world in the far-away Desert, where no
white man, European, or Christian, could enter (save as a Moslem), or
even approach, without certain death. They are more jealously guarded
than the "Holy Grail," and this Work narrates how this Pilgrimage was
accomplished. My husband had lived as a Dervish in Sind, which greatly
helped him; and he studied every separate thing until he was master of
it, even apprenticing himself to a blacksmith to learn how to make
horse-shoes and to shoe his own horses. It meant living with his life
in his hand, amongst the strangest and wildest companions, adopting
their unfamiliar manners, living for nine months in the hottest and
most unhealthy climate, upon
[p.xviii]repulsive food; it meant complete and absolute isolation from
everything that makes life tolerable, from all civilisation, from all
his natural habits; the brain at high tension, but the mind never
wavering from the role he had adopted; but he liked it, he was happy in
it, he felt at home in it, and in this Book he tells you how he did it,
and what he saw.
Sir Richard Burton died at the age of 70, on the 20th October, 1890.
During the last 48 years of his life, he lived only for the benefit and
for the welfare of England and of his countrymen, and of the Human Race
at large. Let us reverently raise up this "Monument," aere perennius,
to his everlasting memory.
ISABEL BURTON.
May 24, 1893.
[p.xix]PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
AFTER a lapse of twenty-five years, a third edition of my Pilgrimage
has been called for by the public, to whom I take this opportunity of
returning thanks. Messrs. Mullan have chosen the very best opportunity.
My two publications concerning the Khedival Expeditions to Midian ("The
Gold Mines of Midian," and "The Land of Midian Revisited"), are, as I
have stated in the Preface, sequels and continuations of this
Pilgrimage from which the adventures forming their subject may be said
to date.
The text has been carefully revised, and the "baggage of notes" has
been materially lightened.[FN#1] From the Appendix I have removed
matter which, though useful to the student, is of scant general
interest. The quaint and interesting "Narrative and Voyages of
Ludovicus Vertomannus, Gentleman of Rome," need no longer be read in
extracts, when the whole has been printed by the Hakluyt Society. (The
Travels of Ludovico di Varthema in Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and
Arabia Felix, in Persia, India, and Ethiopia, A.D. 1503 to 1508.
Translated from the original Italian edition of 1510, with a Preface by
John Winter Jones, Esq., F.S.A., and edited,
[p.xx]with notes and an Introduction, by George Percy Badger, late
Government Chaplain in the Presidency of Bombay. London.) On the other
hand, I have inserted after the Appendix, with the permission of the
author, two highly interesting communications from Dr. Aloys Sprenger,
the well-known Orientalist and Arabist, concerning the routes of the
Great Caravans. My friend supports his suspicions that an error of
direction has been made, and geographers will enjoy the benefit of his
conscientious studies, topographical and linguistic.
The truculent attacks made upon pilgrims and Darwayshes call for a few
words of notice. Even that learned and amiable philanthropist, the late
Dr. John Wilson of Bombay ("Lands of the Bible," vol. ii., p. 302)
alludes, in the case of the Spaniard Badia, alias Ali Bey al-Abbasi, to
the "unjustifiable fanciful disguise of a Mohammedan Pilgrim." The
author of the Ruddy Goose Theory ("Voice of Israel from Mount Sinai")
and compiler of the "Historical Geography of Arabia" has dealt a foul
blow to the memory of Burckhardt, the energetic and inoffensive Swiss
traveller, whose name has ever been held in the highest repute. And now
the "Government Chaplain" indites (Introduction, p. xxvii.) the
following invidious remarks touching the travels of Ludovico di
Varthema-the vir Deo carus, be it remarked, of the learned and laical
Julius Caesar Scaliger:
"This is not the place to discuss the morality of an act involving the
deliberate and voluntary denial of what a man holds to be truth in a
matter so sacred as that of Religion. Such a violation of conscience is
not justifiable by the end which the renegade (!) may have in view,
however abstractedly praiseworthy it may be; and even granting that his
demerit should be gauged by the amount of knowledge which he possesses
of what is true and what false, the conclusion is inevitable, that
nothing short of utter ignorance of the precepts of his faith, or a
[p.xxi]conscientious disbelief in them, can fairly relieve the
Christian, who conforms to Islamism without a corresponding persuasion
of its verity, of the deserved odium all honest men attach to apostasy
and hypocrisy."
The reply to this tirade is simply, "Judge not; especially when you are
ignorant of the case which you are judging." Perhaps also the writer
may ask himself, Is it right for those to cast stones who dwell in a
tenement not devoid of fragility?
The second attack proceeds from a place whence no man would reasonably
have expected it. The author of the "Narrative of a Year's Journey
through Central and Eastern Arabia" (vol. i., pp. 258-59) thus
expresses his opinions:-
"Passing oneself off for a wandering Darweesh, as some European
explorers have attempted to do in the East, is for more reasons than
one a very bad plan. It is unnecessary to dilate on that moral aspect
of the proceeding which will always first strike unsophisticated minds.
To feign a religion which the adventurer himself does not believe, to
perform with scrupulous exactitude, as of the highest and holiest
import, practices which he inwardly ridicules, and which he intends on
his return to hold up to the ridicule of others, to turn for weeks and
months together the most sacred and awful bearings of man towards his
Creator into a deliberate and truthless mummery, not to mention other
and yet darker touches,-all this seems hardly compatible with the
character of a European gentleman, let alone that of a Christian."
This comes admirably a propos from a traveller who, born a Protestant,
of Jewish descent, placed himself "in connection with," in plain words
took the vows of, "the order of the Jesuits," an order "well-known in
the annals of philanthropic daring"; a popular preacher who declaimed
openly at Bayrut and elsewhere against his own nation, till the
proceedings of a certain Father Michael
[p.xxii]Cohen were made the subject of an official report by Mr.
Consul-General Moore (Bayrut, November 11, 1857); an Englishman by
birth who accepted French protection, a secret mission, and the
"liberality of the present Emperor of the French"; a military officer
travelling in the garb of what he calls a native (Syrian) "quack" with
a comrade who "by a slight but necessary fiction passed for his
brother-in-law[FN#2]"; a gentleman who by return to Protestantism
violated his vows, and a traveller who was proved by the experiment of
Colonel (now Sir Lewis) Pelly to have brought upon himself all the
perils and adventures that have caused his charming work to be
considered so little worthy of trust. Truly such attack argues a
sublime daring. It is the principle of "vieille coquette, nouvelle
devote"; it is Satan preaching against Sin. Both writers certainly lack
the "giftie" to see themselves as others see them.
In noticing these extracts my object is not to defend myself: I
recognize no man's right to interfere between a human being and his
conscience. But what is there, I would ask, in the Moslem Pilgrimage so
offensive to Christians-what makes it a subject of "inward ridicule"?
Do they not also venerate Abraham, the Father of the Faithful? Did not
Locke, and even greater names, hold Mohammedans to be heterodox
Christians, in fact Arians who, till the end of the fourth century,
represented the mass of North-European Christianity? Did Mr. Lane
neverconform by praying at a Mosque in Cairo? did he ever fear to
confess it? has he been called an apostate for so doing? Did not Father
Michael Cohen prove himself an excellent Moslem at Wahhabi-land?
The fact is, there are honest men who hold that Al-Islam,
[p.xxiii]in its capital tenets, approaches much nearer to the faith of
Jesus than do the Pauline and Athanasian modifications which, in this
our day, have divided the Indo-European mind into Catholic and Roman,
Greek and Russian, Lutheran and Anglican. The disciples of Dr. Daniel
Schenkel's school ("A Sketch of the Character of Jesus," Longmans,
1869) will indeed find little difficulty in making this admission.
Practically, a visit after Arab Meccah to Angle-Indian Aden, with its
"priests after the order of Melchisedeck," suggested to me that the
Moslem may be more tolerant, more enlightened, more charitable, than
many societies of self-styled Christians.
And why rage so furiously against the "disguise of a wandering
Darwaysh?" In what point is the Darwaysh more a mummer or in what does
he show more of betise than the quack? Is the Darwaysh anything but an
Oriental Freemason, and are Freemasons less Christians because they
pray with Moslems and profess their belief in simple unitarianism?