Sir James William Redhouse and His Work

An English and Turkish dictionary. [Entitled] Redhouse's Turkish dictionary - Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by Charles Wells, Ph.D. Date 1880.

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Sir James William Redhouse KCMG (30 December 1811 – 4 January 1892) authored the original and authoritative Ottoman - English dictionary. He was commissioned by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions for his dictionary. His work was later used as the basis for many Turkish - English dictionaries.

Redhouse was born near London, the eldest son of James Redhouse and his wife Elizabeth Saunders. He was orphaned and educated at Christ's Hospital from 1819 to 1826. In 1826 he toured the Mediterranean, Smyrna (now Izmir) and Constantinople  (now Istanbul). He was offered a post by the Turkish government as a draftsman, and as a result learnt Turkish. In 1830 he visited Russia and returned to England in 1834 to publish a Turkish-English dictionary.

In 1838 Redhouse returned to work for the Ottoman government as an interpreter to the Grand Vizier and the Minister for Foreign Affairs. He transferred to the Ottoman Admiralty in 1840, became a member of the Naval Council, and went to Syria to help communications between the English Austrian and Ottoman fleets which were running a blockade. He received the Sultan's Imperial Order (İftar Nişanı) in 1841. In 1843 he was appointed secretary and interpreter to the British Commissioner William Fenwick Williams, who was arranging a peace treaty between the Ottoman Empire and Persia. Redhouse was also involved in peace negotiations at Erzurum in 1847 and was awarded the Persian Order of the Lion and the Sun. He returned to Constantinople until 1853. He was appointed oriental translator to the Foreign Office in 1854 and went to Paris to help negotiate a treaty with Persia.[1]

Redhouse retired from the Foreign Office to concentrate on literary work. He joined the Royal Asiatic Society in 1854 and was its secretary from 1861 to 1864. He lived at Kilburn where he compiled a dictionary of Arabic, Persian and Turkish languages. In 1884 he was given an honorary doctorate at Cambridge University. He was made CMG in 1885 and knighted in 1888.

Redhouse married firstly Jane Carruthers Slade, daughter of Thomas Slade of Liverpool, who died in 1887. He was married again in 1888 to Eliza Colquhoun, daughter of Sir Patrick Colquhoun.[1]

Works

Grammaire raisonné de la langue Ottomane (1846)

Vade mecum of the Ottoman colloquial language (1855)

Turkish vade mecum (1877)

A simplified grammar of the Ottoman-Turkish (1884)

Müntehabatı lügatı Osmaniye (1838)

A dictionary of Arabic and Persian words used in Turkish (1853)

A Turkish and English lexicon shewing the English significations of the Turkish terms (1890)

Kitabı maanii lehçe li James Redhouse el İngilizi (1890)

The Mesnevi (1881)

A Vindication of the Ottoman Sultans title of caliph (1877)

On the history, system and varieties of Turkish poetry (1879)

See also: Sir James W. Redhouse (1811-1892): The Making of a Perfect Orientalist? Author(s): Carter V. Findley Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 99, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1979), pp. 573- 600 

Charles Wells [2]

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[1] 

Sir Patrick (Macchombaich de) Colquhoun QC (13 April 1815 – 18 May 1891) was a British diplomat, legal writer and sculler who influenced early Cambridge rowing.

Colquhoun was the son of James Colquhoun and the grandson of the Patrick Colquhoun who was Lord Provost of Glasgow. He was educated at Westminster and St John's College, Cambridge.
In 1837 he won the Wingfield Sculls  and in the same year instituted the Colquhoun Sculls at the University of Cambridge.

From 1840 to 1844, Colquhoun was Plenipotentiary of the Hanse Towns at Constantinople, Persia and Greece, through his father's connections. In Constantinople he was close friends with James Redhouse. He encountered the author George Borrow on his travels and was not impressed.[8] He then returned to England and joined the Home Circuit. He was well respected in the literary world and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1845. Charles Leland wrote Who that knows London knoweth not Sir Patrick Colquhoun? I made his acquaintance in 1848, when, coming over from student-life in Paris. He was also a noted linguist. From 1857 to 1866, he was Aulic Counsellor to the King of Saxony and standing Counsel to the Saxon Legation. He was then member of the Supreme Court of Justice in Corfu from 1858 to 1861. In 1861, when he was Chief Justice of the Ionian Islands, he was knighted on 14 November. Colquhoun became Queen's Counsel in 1868 and a bencher of the Inner Temple in 1869.

Colquhoun died at 2 King's Bench Walk at the age of 76. He was a member of the Order of the Temple and associated with fringe Freemasonry.

Colquhoun married Katherine de St Vitalis. Their daughter married Sir James Redhouse.

[2] Charles WELLS

WELLS, Charles Son of J. West. Wells.

Studied at King’s College London (Oriental Department). Turkish Prizeman of King’s College London, 1860. Special correspondent of Daily Telegraph in the Schleswig-Holstein War, 1864.

Master of Arts Oxfordshire.

Doctor of Philosophy.

Professor of English at Imperial Naval College Constantinople, 1870-1874. Private Secretary to General 2134 Kemball on Turco-Persian Frontier Commission, 1875, and in Turco-Servian War, 1876. Professor of Turkish, King’s College London, since 1889.

Leipzig; Oriental Translator to the Foreign Office since 1892.

Works

The Literature of the Turks: A Turkish Chrestomathy; Turkish With T//E Best Turkish, Authors (Historians, Novelists, Drama (Classic Reprint) (The Turkish dominions are about four times as large as Fr...)

Practical Grammar of the Turkish Language ((as spoken and written) with exercises for translation in...)

Mehemet the Kurd and Other Tales, from Eastern Sources (Mehemet the Kurd, and other tales, from Eastern sources (...)