First edition of a ground-breaking trove of 782 Arabic proverbs, published here in the original Arabic with English translations and (sometimes extensive) explanations of their meaning. Burckhardt took some from a collection assembled by the Egyptian scholar Shered ad-Din Ibn Assad, adding othersas he heard them quoted in general society or in the bázár . Several Scriptural sayings and maxims of ancient sages will be found here naturalized among Arabs; as well as some Proverbs which have generally been supposed of European origin(preface). This makes the present publication an essential primary source for Islamic, Egyptian and Arabic oral history, preserving popular proverbs collected before 1817. The Swiss explorer, orientalist and archaeologist Burckhardt (1784-1817) travelled through Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Nubia and the Arabian Peninsula, and rediscovered the ancient city of Petra. Disguised as an Arab, he crossed the Red Sea to Jeddah under the nameSheikh Ibrahim, passed an e