Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah (Easton Press Deluxe Limited Edition)

In the spring of 1853, a man presenting himself as Mirza Abdullah joined the pilgrim caravan assembling in Cairo for the Hajj to Mecca and Medina. He was fluent in Arabic, Persian, Hindustani, and half a dozen other languages. He carried surgical instruments and used them. He kept meticulous notes, concealed in a hollowed walking staff. He was, in fact, Captain Richard Francis Burton of the East India Company's Bombay Infantry, and the notes he carried were among the most closely observed records of the Islamic world ever compiled by a European.

Burton not only reached Medina and Mecca; he entered the Kaaba itself and participated in the full rites of the Hajj, becoming one of the very few non-Muslims ever to have done so and returned to record the experience. Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, published in 1855, made him famous almost immediately. It is travel writing of the highest order: physical hardships, isocial complexity, and the extraordinary range of humanity converging on the same holy city from across the Muslim world.

Burton went on to achieve many subsequent remarkable feats: including translations of the unexpurgated Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra, as well as produce some forty volumes of travel, scholarship, and verse. He was knighted in 1886. His wife Isabel burned many of his unpublished manuscripts after his death in 1890. The Pilgrimage survived intact, and it stands as the work that defined his legend.

The Easton Press Deluxe Limited Edition, produced in 2014 in a strictly limited run of just 400 numbered sets and sold out within fifteen months of announcement, presents the complete text in two folio volumes housed in an illustrated cloth slipcase. It is among the more tightly limited productions in the Easton Press catalogue.

Deluxe limited edition. Limited to 400 numbered sets, this being number 57. Large Octavo. Full brown leather. Spines with raised bands, profusely gilt-decorated. Cloth slipcase with gilt illustrations. All edges gilt. Silk moiré endpapers. Satin ribbon page markers. Illustrated throughout. Both volumes present as new, free from imperfections. Slipcase shows very minor signs of shelf wear only.

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Catalogue Number: HH000573