"In time, by dint of plain living, high thinking, and stifling generally the impulses of his nature, Burton became a Master Sufi, and all his life he sympathised with, and to some extent practised Sufism."
He introduced the words pajamas and safari to the English language.
While in the army, he kept a large menagerie of tame monkeys in the hopes of learning their language.
"...he appeared in the bazaars of the Sind cities as Mirza Abdullah of Bushire, a rich merchant, a vendor of fine linen, calicoes and muslins..."
"... the "Story of the Sultan, the Dirveshe, and
the Barber's son"...The tale is magical and Rosicrucian"
"I was careful to inquire about the occult sciences, remembering that Paracelsus had travelled in Arabia, and that the Count Cagliostro (Giuseppe Balsamo), who claimed the Meccan Sharif as his father, asserted that about A.D. 1765 he had studied alchemy at Al-Madinah. "
According to Sir Richard Burton, "Sufi-ism [was] the Eastern parent of Freemasonry." (See, F. Hitchman, Burton, Volume 1, p. 286)
"The pilgrim is urged by the voice of his soul "
O thou, toiling so fiercely for worldly pleasure and for
transitory profit, wilt thou endure nothing to win
a more lasting boon ? "
Hence it is that pilgrimage is common to all ancient
faiths. The Sabaeans, or old Arabians, visited the
Pyramids as the sepulchres of Seth and his son
Sabi, the founder of their sect. The classical philo-
sophers wandered through the Valley of the Nile. The
Jews annually went up to Jerusalem. The Tartar
Buddhists still journey to distant Lamaserais, and
the Hindus to Egypt, to Tibet, to Gay a, on the
Ganges, and to the inhospitable Caucasus. The
spirit of pilgrimage animated mediaeval Europe,
and a learned Jesuit traveller considers the proces-
sions of the Roman Catholic Church modern vestiges
of the olden rite. "
WANDERINGS IN THREE CONTINENTS
-BY THE LATE CAPTAIN SIR RICHARD F. BURTON, K.C.M.G,
"The Arab-Islamic legacy informed not only the prisca sapientia, but the prisca sapientia's Hermetic, Rosicrucian and alchemical offshoots...Rosicrucians recognized Arabia as the source of their inspiration"
In his Thousand Nights and a Night - notes re: Djinn
Sir Richard F. Burton has a fair amount to say about them in the footnotes including:
" Jinni - The Arab singular (whence the French "genie"); fem. Jinniyah; the Div and Rakshah of old Guebre-land and the "Rakshasa,' or "Yaksha," of Hinduism. It would be interesting to trace the evident connection, by no means "accidental," of "Jinn" with the "Genius" who came to the Romans through the Asiatic Etruscans, and whose name I cannot derive from "Gignomai" or "genitus." He was unknown to the Greeks, who had the Daimon, a family which separated, like the Jinn and the Genius, into two categories, the good (Agatho-daemons) and the bad (Kako-daemons). We know nothing concerning the Jinn amongst the pre-Moslemitic or pagan Arabs: the Moslems made him a supernatural anthropoid being, created of subtle fire (Koran chapts, xv. 27; lv. 14), not of earth like man, propagating his kind, ruled by mighty kings, the last being Jan bin Jan, missionarised by Prophets and subject to death and Judgement. From the same root are "Junun" = madness (i.e., possession or obsession by the Jinn) and "Majnun" = a madman. According to R. Jeremiah bin Eliazar in Psalm xli. 5, Adam was excommunicated for one hundred and thirty years during which he begat children in his own image (Gen. v. 3) and these were Mazikeen or Shedeem - Jinns.
Elsewhere in his translation, Burton notes that Jann is usually taken as the plural form of Jinni.
Classes of Jinni include the Ifrit ("pronounced Aye-frit", fem. Ifritah) and the Marid (fem. Maridah) who are usually, but not always, hostile to mankind."
The cemetery of St Mary Magdalene's Church in Mortlake contains the tomb of Sir Richard Burton. buried in a remarkable tomb in the shape of a Bedouin tent at Mortlake in southwest London
The Funeral at Mortlake, 15th June 1891.motto had been “Honour not Honours.”
The sum of £700 having been raised by Burton’s admirers, a mausoleum, made of dark Forest of Dean stone and white Carrara marble, and shaped like an Arab tent, was erected in the Catholic Cemetery at Mortlake. Over the door is an open book inscribed with the names of Sir Richard and Lady Burton, and below the book runs a ribbon with the words “This monument is erected to his memory by his loving countrymen.”
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