Claudius James Rich

Claudius James Rich (28 March 1787 – 5 October 1821) was a British Assyriologist, business agent, traveller and antiquarian scholar. Biography Rich was born near Dijon "of a good family", but passed his childhood at Bristol. Early on, he developed a gift for languages, becoming familiar not only with Latin and Greek but also with Hebrew, Syriac, Kurdish, Persian, Turkish and other Eastern tongues. In 1803, by the influence of friends, he was appointed a cadet in the East India Company's service. The Company's directors were so much impressed by Rich's linguistic attainments that they presented him with a writership on the Bombay Presidency, and thus changed his career from the military to the civil side. At the same time he was provisionally attached as secretary to Charles Lock, who was proceeding to Egypt as consul-general, in order that he might improve his Arabic and Turkish under the consul's direction. Rich embarked early in 1804 in the Hindostan, which was wrecked, and Rich escaped to the Catalonian coast. Thence he made his way to Malta, after some stay in Italy, where he learnt to speak Italian, and devoted himself to music, of which he was passionately fond. Lock died before Rich could reach Egypt, and Rich, by permission of the directors, prosecuted his oriental studies at Constantinople and Smyrna, perfecting himself in Turkish. Proceeding to Alexandria as assistant to Edward Missett, the new British consul-general there, he devoted himself to Arabic and its various dialects, and made himself master of Eastern manners and usages. On leaving Egypt he travelled by land to the Persian Gulf, disguised as a Mamluk, visiting Damascus, and entering the great mosque undetected. At Bombay, which he reached in September 1807, he was the guest of Sir James Mackintosh, whose eldest daughter Mary he married on 22 January 1808, proceeding soon after to Baghdad as the British Resident, a post he held for six years.