Sir Richard Francis Burton was born in 1821 in the UK and studied Arabic
\n at Oxford University. He joined the British Indian Army where he mastered
\n many more languages. He has been described variously as “brilliant
\n and eccentric” but also as “one of those men who could never
\n do wrong”. His major claim to fame lay in the controversy surrounding
\n his involvement with the quest for the source of the Nile and also translating
\n the 16 volumes of “The Tales of the Arabian Nights” and the
\n Kama Sutra. <\/p>\n
He was an explorer, an excellent linguist – said to speak over
\n 29 languages, a writer, soldier and an excellent swordsman. He also loved
\n travelling in disguise and in 1853 he entered the forbidden cities of
\n Medina and Mecca, disguised as an Arab pilgrim. No account of Burton would
\n be complete without a quick discussion of John Hanning Speke. In contrast
\n to Burton, Speke was not very good at languages, and by all accounts,
\n not terribly bright. Speke’s great passion was big game hunting and this
\n was one of his motivating reasons for joining an expedition to seek the
\n source of the Nile and also open up hitherto unexplored parts of Africa.\n <\/p>\n
In 1856 the British Royal Geographical Society invited Burton to lead
\n an expedition in search of the source of the Nile. Speke was part of the
\n expedition. The two found Lake Tanganyika but both were too ill to explore
\n the lake. Burton’s legs were paralysed through malaria and Speke was almost
\n blind as a result of a beetle getting into his ear. They both returned
\n to Tabora and whilst Burton was recovering, Speke made a trip north to
\n Lake Victoria and guessed that this was the source of the White Nile –
\n an inspired guess that was not confirmed by Livingstone and Stanley many
\n years later. This started the disagreement between Burton and Speke. Burton
\n was too ill to travel back to England, so Speke arrived back in London
\n first. When Burton returned, he discovered that Speke had taken most of
\n the credit for the discovery of Lake Tanganyika and that Speke had upstaged
\n him. <\/p>\n
Burton and Speke remained bitter public rivals. Mysteriously, Speke
\n died after meeting with Burton the night before Speke was going to give
\n a public talk about finding the source of the White Nile. About 14 years
\n later, Burton was appointed British Consul to Trieste where he wrote around
\n 43 books and translated many other texts. Queen Victoria knighted Burton
\n in February 1886 and he died on Oct. 20, 1890, in Trieste. <\/p>\n
Sir Richard Francis Burton was born in 1821 in the UK and studied Arabic at Oxford University. He joined the British Indian Army where he mastered many more languages. He…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"css_class_manager_body_classes":"","css_class_manager_use_in_post_loop":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-main-article","tag-october-2001"],"yoast_head":"\n