Joseph Dacre Carlyle

Rev Joseph Dacre Carlyle FRSE (4 June 1759 – 18 April 1804) was an English orientalist.

Life

He was born in Carlisle, Cumberland, where his father George Carlyle practised as a physician. He was educated at Carlisle grammar school and then Kirkby Lonsdale School before being accepted by Christ's College, Cambridge. He shortly afterwards moved to Queens' College. He proceeded B.A. in 1779, and was elected a fellow of Queens', took his M.A, degree in 1783, and B.D. in 1793. During his residence at Cambridge he studied with David Zamio (Europeanised name) from Baghdad. He was appointed Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic on the resignation of William Craven in 1796.

In the meantime he had obtained some church preferment at Carlisle, and had succeeded Paley in 1793 as chancellor of the diocese. In 1792, he published the Rerum Ægyptiacarum Annales, translated from the Arabic of Ibn Taghribirdi; and in 1796 Specimens of Arabian Poetry, translations with some details of the authors selected.

In 1799, Carlyle was appointed chaplain to Lord Elgin's mission to Constantinople, with the special scholarly duties of learned referee. He made a tour through Asia Minor, Palestine, Greece, and Italy, collecting Greek and Syriac manuscripts for a proposed new version of the New Testament.

Returning to England in September 1801, Carlyle was presented the living of Newcastle-on-Tyne. His health was poor, and he died after an illness on 13 April 1804.

Works

Carlyle's Poems suggested chiefly by Scenes in Asia Minor, Syria and Greece, together with some translations from the Arabic, were published after his death, 1805, with extracts from his journal and a preface by his after. He had also almost completed an account of his tour through the Troad, which was never published. His Arabic Bible, revised from Walton's text, was issued at Newcastle, edited by Henry Ford, professor of Arabic at Oxford, in 1811.

Some manuscripts from Carlyle's collection

• Minuscule 470
• Minuscule 471
• Minuscule 472
• Minuscule 473
• Minuscule 474
• Minuscule 475
• Minuscule 488
• Lectionary 232

References

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 
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