El Borak
Fictional character / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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El Borak, otherwise known as Francis Xavier Gordon, is a fictional character created by Robert E. Howard. Gordon was a Texan gunfighter from El Paso who had travelled the world and settled in Afghanistan. He is known in Asia for his exploits in that continent.
Francis Xavier Gordon | |
---|---|
El Borak character | |
First appearance | "The Daughter of Erlik Khan" (1934) |
Created by | Robert E. Howard |
In-universe information | |
Alias | El Borak |
Gender | Male |
Nationality | American |
The character was originally created when Howard was only ten years old,[1] but he did not see print until "The Daughter of Erlik Khan" in the December 1934 issue of Top-Notch. He is likely to have been inspired by real people such as Richard Francis Burton, John Nicholson, "Chinese" Gordon and Lawrence of Arabia as well as the fiction of Talbot Mundy.[2] One of the earliest surviving stories where he made an appearance was a story written by Howard when he was sixteen years old.[1] These stories, however, were not complete and the character itself faded from the author's consciousness for several years.[1] He was revived in 1933 together with another oriental adventurer, Kirby O'Donnell in stories published by Top-Notch, Complete Stories and Thrilling Adventures.[3]
Although Howard is best known for his fantasy fiction, the El Borak stories are straight adventure fiction and only "Three-Bladed Doom" contains a fantasy element.
The background of the El Borak stories is similar to that of the Conan the Barbarian story "The People of the Black Circle" in which Conan is a chieftain of a hill tribe in what corresponds to Afghanistan.