Charles James Lyall

Sir Charles James Lyall (9 March 1845 – 1 September 1920) was a British Arabic scholar, and civil servant working in India during the period of the British Raj.

Life Charles James Lyall was born in London on 9 March 1845. 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 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. He arrived there on 4 December 1867 and was appointed assistant magistrate and collector in the North-Western Provinces.

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.

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 Companion of the Order of the Star of India (CSI) in June 1893 and then, in June 1897, he was gazetted in the Diamond Jubilee Honours list as a Knight Commander of the same Order.

Upon his return to England, Lyall was transferred to the India Office in London as secretary to the Judicial and Public Department. He held that post until his retirement in 1910.

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.

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 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

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 and Arabic literature. His articles on "Hindostani Literature", etc. were published in the ninth and eleventh editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Lyall was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, 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 Edinburgh, Oxford and Strasbourg. He assisted in the foundation of the London School of Oriental Studies.

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

(Co-authored with A. S. Lethbridge)

("Edited, arranged and supplemented" by Lyall)

(Edited by Lyall) (Edited by Lyall) (Edited by Lyall; compiled by A. A. Bevan)

(Edited and translated by Lyall)