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{{For|the soldier and first-class cricketer|Charles Ross Lyall}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2021}}
{{Use British English|date=May 2012}}

'''Sir Charles James Lyall''' {{postnominals|country=GBR|size=100%|KCSI|CIE|FBA}} (1845–1920) was an [[Arabist|Arabic scholar]],<ref>{{cite journal|title=Lyall, Sir Charles James|journal=Who's Who|year=1919|pages= 1529–1530|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015047639912;view=1up;seq=1571}}</ref> and English [[civil servant]] working in India during the period of the [[British Raj]].

==Life==
Charles James Lyall was born in London on 9 March 1845.<ref name=ODNB>{{ODNBweb|id=34642|title=Lyall, Sir Charles James}}</ref> He was the eldest son of a banker, also called Charles, and his wife Harriet (née Matheson). Educated initially at [[King's College School]] and then [[King's College London]], in 1863 Lyall went on to study [[Mods and Greats|Greats]] at [[Balliol College, Oxford]], from which he graduated in 1867 with a BA degree. He had already come first in the 1865 [[competitive examination]] for appointments in the [[Indian Civil Service]], and after graduation he left England for India.<ref name="ODNB"/><ref name=Hilliard1914>{{cite book |title=The Balliol College Register, 1832–1914 |first=Edward |last=Hilliard |year=1914 |publisher=Private circulation |pages=[https://archive.org/details/balliolcollegere00ballrich/page/209 209]–210 |url=https://archive.org/details/balliolcollegere00ballrich |access-date=2011-11-22}}</ref> He arrived there on 4 December 1867 and was appointed assistant magistrate and [[District collector|collector]] in the [[North-Western Provinces]].<ref name=IndiaList1905>{{cite book |title=The India List and Office List |publisher=India Office |year=1905 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3VQTAAAAYAAJ |page=552}}</ref>

Lyall spent a brief period, between April and June 1872, as assistant under-secretary in the Foreign department of the British government of India. From September 1873 he was under-secretary in the department of Revenue, Agriculture and Commerce, He was appointed [[Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire]] (CIE) in January 1880, having ended his role as under-secretary in the previous year. From 1880 he was primarily engaged as secretary to the Chief Commissioner of [[Assam]], but also had two periods as Judge and Commissioner for the Assam valley districts and a few months as secretary in the department of Revenue, Agriculture and Commerce.<ref name=ODNB/><ref name=IndiaList1905/>

From August 1889 Lyall spent some time working as home secretary in the Raj government, and was also tasked with an investigation of the penal settlement at [[Port Blair]].<ref name=ODNB/><ref name=IndiaList1905/> He and [[A. S. Lethbridge]], a surgeon in the British administration, concluded that the punishment of [[transportation]] to the [[Andaman Islands]] was failing to achieve the purpose intended and that indeed criminals preferred to go there rather than be incarcerated in Indian jails. Lyall and Lethbridge recommended that a "penal stage" existed in the transportation sentence, whereby transported prisoners were subjected to a period of harsh treatment upon arrival. The outcome was the construction of the [[Cellular Jail]], which has been described as "a place of exclusion and isolation within a more broadly constituted remote penal space."<ref>{{cite book |title=Isolation: places and practices of exclusion |first1=Carolyn |last1=Strange |first2=Alison |last2=Bashford |publisher=Routledge |location=London |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-415-30980-6 |pages=41–42 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=z72MP1zc4KgC}}</ref>

He was formally appointed as home secretary on a permanent basis in November 1890 and was the acting [[Chief Commissioner]] of [[Assam]] between July and October 1894. His last appointment before his retirement from India was between December 1895 and July 1898, during which period he was Chief Commissioner of the [[Central Provinces and Berar]]. He had been appointed a [[Order of the Star of India|Companion of the Order of the Star of India]] (CSI) in June 1893 and then, in June 1897, he was gazetted in the [[1897 Diamond Jubilee Honours|Diamond Jubilee Honours list]] as a Knight Commander of the same Order.<ref name=ODNB/><ref name=IndiaList1905/><ref>{{London Gazette|issue=26947 |date=14 March 1898 |page=1689 }}</ref>

Upon his return to England, Lyall was transferred to the [[India Office]] in London as secretary to the Judicial and Public Department.<ref name=EB1922>{{Cite EB1922 |wstitle=Lyall, Sir Charles James |volume=31 |page=812}}</ref> He held that post until his retirement in 1910.<ref name=ODNB/><ref name=IndiaList1905/><ref name=EB1922/>

Lyall died at his home in Cornwall Gardens, London, on 1 September 1920 and was buried at [[Putney Vale Cemetery]]. He had married Florence, a daughter of Captain Henry Fraser of Calcutta, in 1870 and the couple had two sons and five daughters.<ref name=ODNB/>

==Scholarship==
In his leisure time Lyall was known as a scholar of various Eastern languages. He had demonstrated a gift for Hebrew while at university and he went on to learn Arabic, Hindustani and Persian, as well as sufficient of what was then called the [[Mikir languages|Mikir]] language to enable him to translate some folktales that had been collected by Edward Stack. The ''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'' says that he was "one of Britain's foremost scholars of Eastern languages" and that {{quote|His translations were particularly successful in combining an accurate rendering with a poetical diction which imitated more or less the metres of the originals, although usually without any attempt at rhyme.<ref name=ODNB/>}}

He published the two-volume ''Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry'' (1885, 1894), and translations of ''The Diwan of Abid ibn al-Abras'' (1913), ''The Poems of Amr Son of Qamiah'' (1919), and ''The Mufaddaliyat'' (1921), as well as articles on [[Hindustani language|Hindustani]] and Arabic literature. Some of the latter were published in the ninth and eleventh editions of the ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]''.<ref name=Hilliard1914/><ref name=EB1922/>

Lyall was elected a [[Fellow of the British Academy]],<ref name=EB1922/> of the [[University of Calcutta]] and of King's College, London, as well as being a vice-president of the [[Royal Asiatic Society]] and an official representative of the government of India at various international oriental congresses between 1899 and 1908. He was President of the [[Asiatic Society of Bengal]] in 1894 and an honorary member both of that and of the [[Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft]]. He also received honorary degrees from the universities of [[University of Edinburgh|Edinburgh]], [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] and [[University of Strasbourg|Strasbourg]].<ref name=EB1922/> He assisted in the foundation of the [[London School of Oriental Studies]].<ref name=ODNB/><ref name=Hilliard1914/>

==Publications==
The following list is not exhaustive. Lyall contributed papers to many journals.

*{{cite book |title=A sketch of the Hindustani language |url=https://archive.org/details/asketchhindusta01lyalgoog |year=1880 |location=Edinburgh |publisher=Adam & Charles Black}}
*{{cite book |title=Translations of ancient Arabian poetry : chiefly, præ-Islamic, with an introduction and notes |year=1885 |volume=1 |location=London |publisher=Williams and Norgate}}
*{{cite book |title=Report on the working of the Penal settlement of Port Blair |publisher=Printed by the Superintendent of Government Printing, India |year=1890–1891 |location=Calcutta}} (Co-authored with A. S. Lethbridge)
*{{cite book |title=Guide to the transliteration of Hindu and Muhammadan names in the Bengal army |url=https://archive.org/details/guidetotranslite00lyalrich |year=1892 |edition= 3rd |location=Calcutta |publisher=Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing}}
*{{cite book |title=Translations of ancient Arabian poetry : chiefly, præ-Islamic, with an introduction and notes |year=1894 |volume=2 |location=London |publisher=Williams and Norgate}}
*{{cite book |title=Ten ancient Arabic poems with commentary by Tibrizi |year=1891–1894}}<ref name=Hilliard1914/>
*{{cite journal |title=The words "Ḥanif" and Muslim" |journal=Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society |location=London |date=October 1903 |pages=771–784}}
*{{cite book |title=The Mikirs; from the papers of the late Edward Stack |url=https://archive.org/details/mikirsfrompaper00lyalgoog |year=1908 |location=London |publisher=David Nutt}} ("Edited, arranged and supplemented" by Lyall)
*{{cite book |title=The Diwans of Abid ibn al-Abras, of Asad, and Amir ibn at-Tufail, of Amir ibn Sasaah, edited for the first time, from the ms. in the British museum, and supplied with a translation and notes |url=https://archive.org/details/diwansofabidibna21abiduoft |year=1913 |publisher=Leyden: E. J. Brill; London: Luzac & Co.}}
*{{cite book |title=The Mufaḍḍaliyāt; an anthology of ancient Arabian odes compiled by Al-Mufaḍḍal son of Muḥammad according to the recension and with the commentary of Abū Muḥammad Al-Qāsim Ibn Muḥammad Al-Anbāri |url=https://archive.org/details/mufaddaliyatant01mufauoft |year=1921 |volume=1: Arabic text |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press}} (Edited by Lyall)
*{{cite book |title=The Mufaḍḍaliyāt; an anthology of ancient Arabian odes compiled by Al-Mufaḍḍal son of Muḥammad according to the recension and with the commentary of Abū Muḥammad Al-Qāsim Ibn Muḥammad Al-Anbāri |url=https://archive.org/details/mufaddaliyatanth00mufauoft |year=1918 |volume=2: Translation and Notes |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press}} (Edited by Lyall)
*{{cite book |title=The Mufaḍḍaliyāt; an anthology of ancient Arabian odes compiled by Al-Mufaḍḍal son of Muḥammad according to the recension and with the commentary of Abū Muḥammad Al-Qāsim Ibn Muḥammad Al-Anbāri |url=https://archive.org/details/mufaddaliyatanth03mufauoft |year=1918 |volume=3: Indexes to the Arabic text |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press}} (Edited by Lyall; compiled by [[A. A. Bevan]])
*{{cite journal |title=Some aspects of ancient Arabic poetry as illustrated by a little-known anthology |journal=Proceedings of the British Academy|location=London |volume=8 |year=1918 |pages=365–380}}
*{{cite journal |title=Transliteration of Arabic and Persian. Report of the committee appointed to draw up a practical scheme for the transliteration into English of words and names belonging to the languages of the nearer East. |location=London |journal=Proceedings of the British Academy |volume=8 |year=1918}}
*{{cite book |title=The poems of 'Amr son of Qami'ah |url=https://archive.org/details/poemsofamrsonofq00amriuoft |year=1919 |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press}} (Edited and translated by Lyall)

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
*{{cite journal |title=Sir Charles James Lyall |author=A. A. B. |journal=The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland |issue=4 |date=October 1920 |pages=667–669 |publisher=Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland |jstor=25209684}}
*{{cite news |work=The Times |location=London |title=Death of Sir Charles Lyall |date=3 September 1920 |page=12 |issue=42506}}
*{{cite journal |first=Reynold Alleyne |last=Nicholson |title=Sir C. J. Lyall, 1845–1920 |journal=Proceedings of the British Academy |volume=9 |date=1919–20 |pages=492–496 |author-link=Reynold Alleyne Nicholson}}
*{{cite journal |title=In Memoriam: Sir Charles James Lyall |first=M. |last=Sprengling |journal=The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures |volume=39 |issue=3 |date=April 1923 |pages=207–217 |jstor=528631 |doi=10.1086/369988|s2cid=170442706 }}{{subscription required}}

==External links==
* {{Wikisource author-inline}}

{{FBA 1915}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lyall, Charles}}
[[Category:1845 births]]
[[Category:1920 deaths]]
[[Category:People educated at King's College School, London]]
[[Category:Alumni of King's College London]]
[[Category:Fellows of King's College London]]
[[Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford]]
[[Category:Knights Commander of the Order of the Star of India]]
[[Category:Arabists]]
[[Category:Administrators in British India]]
[[Category:Presidents of The Asiatic Society]]
[[Category:Fellows of the British Academy]]

Charles James Lyall - Revision history

>Citation bot at 18:31, 12 February 2021