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Richard Francis Burton
Image: Rischgitz (photograph, 1864), Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Richard Francis Burton

ريتشارد فرانسيس بيرتون

Notable figure 1821–1890 · Source: Yahya Murad, Muʿjam asmaʾ al-mustashriqin (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2004), p. 234 · Second source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, authority record: Burton, Richard Francis (1821-1890)

Field: Literary translation

Affiliation

Translator of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885–1888)

Biography

He began Arabic at Oxford and completed it in India, travelled to Cairo and the Hijaz in 1853, and later served as British consul in Damascus and then in Trieste. He translated the Thousand and One Nights into English in sixteen volumes (London, 1885–1888), keeping very close to the Arabic original and adding extensive notes.