Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, b. 1821, d. 1890.
Soldier and spy of the British Empire, explorer and cartographer of the Sind and
Punjab (India and Pakistan), the Far East (China) and the Middle East, scholar/translator
of Islamic & Indian literature and erotica, author of The Kasidah. British contemporary of Queen Victoria, Karl Marx, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, Charles Babbage and William Thompson, aka Lord Kelvin.
Burton came from a military family posted in through Mediterranean Europe (France, Rome, Naples,
Spain) and in 1840 took up school at
Oxford where he began to study the East, Latin, Greek
and Arabic. He met John Varley, an amateur astrologist and occultist, which may have sparked his
interest in
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa,
"De Occulta Philoshia" in particular, as
well as Portuguese soldier-poet
Luis Vaz de Camões and 14th century Spanish scholar
Abraham Abulafia of
Saragossa1.
In 1842, Burton was expelled from
Oxford and in June that year boarded the ship
John
Knox for a four month voyage to India where his father had purchased his commission in the
East India Company, which was already preparing ahead for the international struggle over the
Eastern Question; the
Portuguese have failed to hold their
colonies, the French had lost
the
War of 1812 and the
Napoleonic Wars and the
Dutch were retreating to concentrate
their holdings in
South Africa and
Indonesia.
2
Burton was first stationed in Baroda on the Malwa plateau (with eight other officers of the
18th Bombay Native infantry) guarding Company cropland on the river Vishwamitra. During this
posting Burton was put through drilling, Hindustani language and jungle hunting while also
studying fencing and gymnastics. By the summer of 1843, Burton is promoted to
interpreter and ordered to report to Karachi to serve under General Napier
3, who
planned to move troops along the border with Afghanistan to counter the Russian
Czar's
designs on Central and South Asia, where there was expected
'katl-am' ('open blood' in
Arabic).
4
A secret alliance was struck between The Company, on behalf of Burton and Imam Agha Khan
(
Fatimid prince and Isma'ili
Persian), after his troops were driven from
Iran and
Afghanistan by the
Shah in 1842. In the Imam's tent-city, Burton was first exposed to the
culture of the Middle East directly. A quote from his journal:
"...the tents are filled with the bustle of daily life, chatter of voices, song,
quarrels, the Muslim five a time day call to prayer, slaves being beaten, sheep being
slaughtered, the chatter of messengers, caravans and agents, high officials and dancing
girls..."
Burton began now to even dress and speak as an
Isma'ili5, absorbing the stories
which he related to the
Kabbalic texts he studied at
Oxford, especially
numerology and
Natiq6 eschatology. By 1884-45, the struggle for the
Sind region along
the
Punjab began to escalate and Burton was dispatched to gather
intelligence, under the
guise of a trader, laborer or
dervish. In February of 1847, however Burton contracted a
serious fever after nearly three years
covert work. In 1849, after being passed over for a
linguist position, and after seven years in
India, still sick with lingering fever and eye
infection, Burton packed up his "sugar cane, opium, hemp, tobacco, sulfur, indigo leaves,
kohl, dyes and shawls" and heads back to
Karachi, then
Bombay, then
England. His next
year is spent in recovery and with family, as he plans for his
Hajj (pilgrimage to
Mecca.)
In April
1853, Burton boarded a steamer for
Egypt (he'd already let his hair grow in the
Persian style) and once in
Alexandria could pass himself off as a
'murid' or
'faqir' (pilgrim or poor faithful), until locals heard that he was an 'shykh' healer and
he was forced to flee. by the end of May, he was en route to
Cairo, where he visited the
local
gulshan (literally 'rose garden'), a
dervish convent, where he learned of the
Qutb, or Seal of the Saints.
7 After a brawl in Cairo, Burton flees with a
part of
Beduins, who cross the
Suez desert and sail down the
Canal to Yambu, in
Arabia,
on the Red Sea. By mid-July, the same group and Burton move by
caravan to
Medina, resting
place of the
Prophet Mohammed at the
Gate of Pity.
In September 1853, Burton departs
Medina. The desert tribes of the
Benu-Harat have
begun a war which prevents him from traveling through unmapped
Arabia, and instead moves with
a spice
caravan carrying 2000, banded together as defense against bandits, en route to
Mecca. Burton and the
pilgrims arrive there mid-September, where he wanders round the
Ka'aba8 and the great Square. Once the ritual was undertaken, Burton
leaves again with the caravan to
Jeddah, where he contacts a British consul,
Charles Coe,
who books him back to
Cairo. It is there in 1853 that Burton hits upon the idea for the
Nile expedition, which he undertakes with
John Hanning Speke.
Notes:
- the namesake of Jan Potocki's Manuscript found in Saragossa (occult novel with
Chinese-box structure set in 1739, written by a man who believed he was turning into a
werewolf) and the name of the computer in Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum.
- the entire region from the steppes of Central Asia to the Indian Ocean had, through the
colonial period, bubbled up into a sea of conflict between the Sikhs, Sindhis, Baluchis,
Afghans, Persians and the East India Company which sought to exploit the primary
commodity at the time, opium. This later led to the Opium Wars in China (1839-43) as the
port of Bombay alone in 1844 exported $4M of Malwa opium to China.
- Napier was an unusual Colonial commander in that he viewed the Company activities in the
South as war, not commerce, writing in his journal : "The English were the aggressors in India,
and, although our Sovereign can do no wrong, her Ministers can; and no one can lay a
heavier charge upon Napoleon than rests upon the English ministers who conquered India and
Australia, and protected those who committed atrocities ... our object in conquering India,
the object of all our cruelties, was money ... every shilling has been picked out of blood."
- See the Crimean War
- "Conceal! they tenets, thy treasure and thy travels," was an Isma'ili proverb, where in a
widely nomadic culture, it was considered rude (or at least incredibly unwise) while abroad
to espouse beliefs and boasts in a land where you were a guest and stranger.
- the Natiqs were seven figures, literally, 'the Utterers' who spoke God's truth : Adam,
Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and the One yet to Come, and between each were a series
of Seven Mutes, who were to complete the work of each.
- an inner sanctum of Sufi doctrine which adheres to belief in a Mutawalli, chief of
living saints, who can move instanteously from 'gulshan' to 'gulshan', and who guides the
Qutb, a group of 300 saints who preserve the order of the Universe.
- The Ka'aba itself is a black stone situated in the southeast corner of a
giant curtained shrine, around which the Tawaf is practiced, where the stone is circles
four times (3 laps running, one walking).
Sources:
- Rice, Edward. Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton : the secret agent who made the
pilgrimage to Mecca, discovered the Kama Sutra, and brought the Arabian nights to the West
(NY : Scribners, 1990.)
- Abeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains : an exploration Richard F. Burton ; 2v.
(London : Tinsley Brothers, 1863)
- Goa, and the Blue Mountains : or, Six months of sick leave Richard F. Burton.
(London : Richard Bentley, 1851)
- The Jew, the gypsy and el Islam by Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (NY : Herbert S. Stone & Company, 1898)