JOSEPH DACRE

See also:

• CARLYLE, ALEXANDER (1722-1805)
• JOSEPH DACRE CARLYLE (1759-18o4)
• CARLYLE, THOMAS (1795-1881)

CARLYLE (1759-18o4)  , British orientalist, was born in 1759 at Carlisle, where his father was a physician . He went in 1775 to Cambridge, was elected a fellow of Queens' College in 1779, taking the degree of B.D. in 1793 . With the assistance of a native of Bagdad known in England as David Zamio, then resident at Cambridge, he attained great proficiency in Arabic literature; and after succeeding Dr Paley in the chancellorship of Carlisle, he was appointed, in 1795, professor of Arabic in Cambridge University . His translation from the Arabic of Yusuf ibn Taghri Birdi, the Rerum Egypticarum Annales, appeared in 1792, and in 1796 a volume of Specimens of Arabic Poetry, from the earliest times to the fall of the Caliphate, with some account of the authors . Carlyle was appointed chap-lain by Lord Elgin to the embassy at Constantinople in 1799, and prosecuted his researches in Eastern literature in a tour through Asia Minor, Palestine, Greece and Italy, collecting in his travels several valuable Greek and Syriac MSS. for a projected critical edition of the New Testament, collated with the Syriac and other versions—a work, however,which he did not live to complete . On his return to England in 1801 he was presented by the bishop of Carlisle to the living of Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he died on the 12th of April 1804 . After his death there appeared a volume of poems descriptive of the scenes of his travels, with prefaces extracted from his journal . Among other works which he left unfinished was an edition of the Bible in Arabic, completed by H .