Sir James W. Redhouse (1811-1892): The Making of a Perfect Orientalist?

Sir James W. Redhouse (1811-1892): The Making of a Perfect Orientalist?Author(s): Carter V. FindleySource: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 99, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1979), pp. 573-600Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/601447 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 20:40

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal ofthe American Oriental Society.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.82 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 20:40:06 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aos

http://www.jstor.org/stable/601447?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


SIR JAMES W. REDHOUSE (1811-1892):

THE MAKING OF A PERFECT ORIENTALIST?

CARTER V. FINDLEY

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Of unsurpassed importance in the development of Turkish lexicography, Redhouse owed his professional formation to a series of accidents which led him at an early age in Ottoman service. Acquiring his linguistic expertise as a by-product of work in technical capacities, he served the Ottomans as a translator in naval and diplomatic assignments until 185 3. Having begun to publish by that date, he then returned to England and a life of scholarship. Since some of his works were published in Turkish or were anonymous and others remained unfinished, the significance of his contributions has not yet fully been appreciated.

To USE REDHOUSE'S VOLUMINOUS Turkish and English Lexicon of 1890, or its later reprintings is to marvel at the vastness of the oriental learning that lies behind this work. The fact that Redhouse acquired his mastery at a time when the means for the encouragement of oriental studies were so far from what they are today, and the much greater difficulty of the language as he encountered it, can only heighten this impression. Yet, when one turns to the published accounts of Redhouse's life to see how he acquired and used his prodigious learning, wonder gives way to perplexity or resentment. The biographical information which has thus far been available in published form is sketchy at best.' As concerns the central question of Redhouse's professional formation, it can only be said to obscure, rather than elucidate, the truth. If Redhouse the scholar is an object of wonderment, Redhouse the man is a mystery.

Much of this mystery may never be cleared up. None of it can be very readily. For most of his life, Redhouse was too obscure to be traceable in any systematic way. In later years, he covered up some parts of his story. Of the previously unpublicized facts about his life to be presented in the following pages, many were found more or less by accident in the course of a study of the institutional setting in which Redhouse worked for much of his time in Ottoman service.2 These facts have been supplemented by examination of Redhouse's works and collection of such other sources as could be discovered by a systematic search.3 The extreme dispersion of the documentation and the many questions which cannot be fully answered below are adequate proof that more is still to be learned. What follows should, however, be enough to lay the basis for a new appreciation of the contributions which this

From the British Library, Or. Ms. 2959, vol. I, opposite the title page. Published by permission of The British Library Board.

extraordinary man made to the Ottomans as well as to his own people, in the field of international relations as well as in scholarship.

573



574 Journal of the American Oriental Society 99.4 (1979)

I. REDHOUSE'S CHILDHOOD YEARS IN ENGLAND, 1811-26

The mystery about Redhouse's origins and education develops in the very opening lines of the standard biographical accounts. The article published in the Dictionary of National Biography in 1896 may be taken as typical of the view of himself which Redhouse put forward in his later years. In this version, the story begins as follows:

REDHOUSE, SIR JAMES WILLIAM (1 811-1892), oriental scholar, the eldest son of James Redhouse by his wife, Elizabeth Saunders, was born near London on 30 Dec. 1811. He was left an orphan early, and from 1819 to 1826 was educated at Christ's Hospital.

In 1826 he make a tour through the Mediterranean to Smyrna and Constantinople, and there was offered a post as draftsman in the employ of the Ottoman government. This brought him into touch with various official authorities, and led him to the careful study of Turkish. In 1830 he went to Russia. In 1834 he returned to London to publish a Turkish-English- French dictionary, on which he had been long engaged, but found that Thomas Xavier Bianchi's Turkish- French work had anticipated him.

While the first paragraph of this account is credible enough, the implausibility of the rest leaps to the eye. What sort of tours did fifteen-year-old orphans take through the Mediterranean in the age of Oliver Twist? Was it quite normal for them or other Englishmen on "tour" to take positions as draftsmen for the Ottoman government? What was Redhouse doing in Russia? More important, how is one to understand the assertion that Redhouse at the age of twenty-three and with no known education past the age of fifteen, should be well into a lexicographical project which, the account implies, rivaled that of a much older expert who had years of scholarly and official experience behind him.4

Surely the virtue of brevity is carried to a fault in this account. Fortunately, a little inquiry begins to disclose glimpses of what a fuller and franker narrative would have contained, and these glimpses give some sense of why Redhouse, in his respectable and Victorian old age, might have wished the story of his early years to go before the public in a slightly abbreviated form.

For the first eight years there is little to add except that his father died when young James was only five and that the family was originally from Suffolk.5 In terms of his later intellectual development, whatever

else happened in that period must have been eclipsed in significance by Redhouse's admission to Christ's Hospital in 1819.6

Records of Christ's Hospital show that Redhouse was admitted from the parish of St. Mary Newington, Surrey, on the "presentation" of William S. Angill, Esq., on 24 March 1819, "clothed" on 29 April 1819, and expelled on 11 September 1826 for "gross and repeated misconduct."7 The records of Christ's Hospital further state that:

... James William Redhouse, a boy of the Mathe- matical School, had eloped from this house, the second time on the 1 st August, and returned on the 7th, having changed his dress, whereupon, after mature consideration, the Committee resolved that the said James William Redhouse be expelled from this Hospital, as the Treasurer may direct, it appearing that he had been quilty of repeated and gross misconduct, previous to his elopement.8

These few words, when properly understood, give valuable if restricted insights not only into the reasons for Redhouse's later reluctance to publicize circumstances of his youth, but also into a critical phase of his development-the final phase, as far as can now be proven, of his formal education.

The link between Redhouse and William S. Angill is nowhere better explained than by the statement that the former was placed in Christ's Hospital by a "friend of the family."9 Angill was also a man of means, for he had donated two hundred pounds to Christ's Hospital and consequently been elected a Governor of that institution in 1803.10 That office entitled him occasionally to "present" an orphan for admission, and it was thus that he presented Redhouse in March, 1819. The "clothing" of the latter one month later simply implies that he actually entered the institution on that date, adopting its distinctive uniform.loa

Once Redhouse entered Christ's Hospital, he spent the period 1819-22 at a division of that institution for smaller children, located at Hertford.1 1

He returned to Christ's Hospital proper in the City of London in 1822 and was admitted a year later to the "Mathematical School," 12 one of the complex of schools contained within the orphanage and used for the education of the boys in its charge. However anomalous it may seem for a future orientalist, his studies in the Mathematical School explain some important features of Redhouse's later career.

The Mathematical School, 13 founded under a



FINDLEY: Sir James W. Redhouse 575

royal charter of Charles II in 1673 for the express purpose of training boys for a naval career, seems in consequence to have enjoyed a position of prestige within the framework of Christ's Hospital, even though a variety of factors, including the expenses entailed in entering the commissioned ranks of the Navy,14 led most of its graduates into the Merchant Marine instead. For the royal charter called for the recruitment of students for the Mathematical School from the other schools of Christ's Hospital,'5 thus placing this particular school in a sort of predatory relationship to the others, including the better-known Grammar School, with its classical curriculum and its list of famous alumni. In the early nineteenth century, it appears that students were so admitted to the Mathematical School between the ages of eleven and twelve-and-a-half,'6 as Redhouse would have been at the time of his admission.

Once in the Mathematical School, Redhouse would have followed a curriculum heavily weighted toward technical subjects of value to the seafaring man. At least as it was found by a Royal Commission in 1837, the curriculum emphasized mathematics through trigonometry, navigation (including "nautical astronomy"), and drawing, both naval-architectural and cartographic.17 The fact that Redhouse had this much technical education in his youth helps to explain not only the course he followed in Turkey but also the prominence given to technical terminology in his dictionaries.

It is not entirely clear whether the "mathemats" of this period received any training in languages of not. Certainly if they did so, it would hardly have been in anything but Latin.'8 In view of the familiarity with this language to which Redhouse's writings attest and the unlikelihood of his having learned it in the Middle East, it seems safe to assume that he learned some Latin somewhere in Christ's Hospital. In respect of modern languages, however, it is possible to speak categorically. The teaching of French, later of German, began in Christ's Hospital only after 1837.19 Unless the youthful Redhouse found some way to draw on nonacademic opportunities offered by the city around him, as he was later to do in Istanbul, it is thus certain that he learned no French-a thorough grasp of which was to be essential for his later advancement-before he left England.

The exact duration of the course in the Mathe- matical School in Redhouse's day is again not very clear. There is a statement in the Annals implying that it was two years,20 but this, given his age at

entry, does not square well with the fact that Redhouse was still there when he was almost fifteen. In any case, he did not make it to the end, though he was later to maintain that he did;21 and the reasons, aside from what is stated in the record of his dismissal, quoted above, can only be a matter for speculation. Whatever the motive for Redhouse's "elopements," his childhood years in England were at an end. He would not live there permanently again for more than twenty-five years, and the destiny which now awaited him was to change his life in ways that no one could have guessed.

II. REDHOUSE'S "TURKISH PERIOD," 1826-53

The years immediately following Redhouse' s expulsion from Christ's Hospital are among the most obscure of his life. After more than a century and a half, his traces can only partly be rediscovered, but it is clear that fortune took him quickly to Istanbul, where his technical education-and yet another " elopement"-gained him access to a milieu profoundly yet not totally different from anything he had known, a milieu in which he seems soon to have discovered his true vocation. Throughout this period he was to earn his bread primarily, perhaps exclusively, as a servant of the Ottoman government, at the same time that he built up his formidable skills as a linguist. The emphasis given in the conventional biographical accounts to the latter aspect of his activities obscures the fact that the former was in many ways the more important in this period and that it was Redhouse's official service that made possible and thus explains his scholarly development.

The idea which the circumstances of Redhouse's departure from Christ's Hospital will already have given of the real nature of his "tour" through the Mediterranean is sadly confirmed by Captain Adolphus Slade's Record of Travels in Turkey, Greece, etc. First published in 1833 at a time when there was no way of knowing that Redhouse would ever achieve a reputation that there might be a need to preserve, this account records a visit to the Ottoman naval school,

the professor of which when I was there [c. 1828], was a young Englishman, named Redhouse, who had run away from a merchantship in the harbour, on board of which he was a cabin-boy, and then apostatized to avoid being retaken. Mustapha, that was his new name, had poor success with his lazy scholars, one of whom, however, whom I knew on board the flag-ship




as signal officer, was looked on as a prodigy because he could ascertain noon with the quadrant, never supposing that the istrument was intended to produce a more important result.22

On one point, it must be acknowledged, Slade's account does not seem credible. The fact that Ottoman official documents, when they refer to Redhouse, never use any but his English name, painfully transliterated, of that he refers to himself in his Turkish manuscripts only by his full English name, sometimes adding "al-Ingilizi," but never using any Muslim name, makes it impossible to accept the report of conversion in a period when reconversion from Islam to one's original religion was supposed to be a capital offense.23 If the name Mustafa ever was applied to Redhouse, it must have been done so on a short-lived basis or as a matter of convenience, not because of conversion.24

Otherwise, Slade's account is of interest in suggesting how Redhouse used his training at Christ's Hospital to gain a foothold in Istanbul and in implying how he managed to continue his "education" there. A much later account gives details which support and amplify most of what Slade says. Maintaining the fiction that Redhouse "finished" Christ's Hospital and went on the "tour" mentioned in the DNB, this version adds that

... he visited Algiers, Malta, Smyrna, and Constan- tinople, where occupation was offered to him based on his mathematical acquirements and draftsmanship. These opened out relations with the authorities of the Military and Naval Colleges, the Engineers, the War Office, and ultimately with the Foreign Office at the Porte.25

This and Slade's account convey valuable hints about the nature and means of Redhouse's further development in the period down to 1830, as well as about the truly basic question of what may be presumed to have been his early contacts in Ottoman officialdom, the men whose patronage would have made his successful transition into Ottoman service possible in the first place.

It is significant, first of all, that Slade's talk of the "naval school" aligns with the references in the later account to the "authorities of the Military and Naval Colleges." These two schools are in fact the Imperial Naval Engineering School (Muhendishane-i bahri-i humayun) and Army Engineering School (miuhendis- hane-i berri ... ),26 the two being partially combined

from 1795-96 until 1826.27 The Naval Engineering School, in particular, could be regarded as a sort of Ottoman equivalent to the Mathematical School of Christ's Hospital in terms of certain general features such as name (Muhendishane implies an institution having to do with engineers or geometricians), fundamental mission (training for service at sea), and level of education (secondary in modern terms, although the quality of education may have differed markedly). Indeed, the similarity extends to the point that one or more of the same books appear on the syllabi of the period for both the Mathematical School of Christ's Hospital and the Naval Engineer- ing, School.28 Apart from these similarities, the use of foreign instructors had been a frequent occurrence at both the Ottoman engineering schools ever since the first of them, the Naval School, was founded in the 1770's, although the diplomatic reversals of succeeding years must surely have made it difficult to keep up a steady supply of qualified manpower of that type.29 The arrival of Redhouse at a time when military reform was a matter of desperate urgency, but when the Porte was diplomatically isolated, may well have appeared a minor windfall to the military reformers of the day. At the same time, the modest standing of the Naval School as an educational institution-on this point the implications in the passage from Slade are confirmed elsewhere30- would very understandably have made it possible for someone of Redhouse's still limited education and practical experience to make a contribution there in an instructional capacity.

In return, these schools and the associations formed in them made an obvious contribution to Redhouse. Inevitably, he must have been a student as much as an instructor. For whatever assistance he could provide in technical subjects, he could only have been effective in proportion as he acquired a mastery of languages which he had never before had opportunity to study. Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, possibly Persian, and certainly French were then taught in both the military schools. French had been the principal western language of instruction at the Naval School ever since its opening and was only at mid-century to be displaced by English in recognition of English pre-eminence at sea.31 Meanwhile at the Army Engineering School, the method used as late as the 1820's for the teaching of technical subjects revolved around the translation in class of the relevant texts from French into Turkish. Indeed, translating appears to have been emphasized to the detriment of practical application.32 Once in Istanbul,




then, Redhouse's technical education and his limited experience at sea were to serve him as a bridge first into Ottoman service and thus into linguistic studies.

In fact, Redhouse's linguistic endeavors during his first few years in Istanbul reportedly went beyond what the curriculum of the military schools and his presumable duties would have required. For in addition to the "serious study" of Turkish, the knowledge of Persian and Arabic which that "necessitated," and "mastery" of French, he is said to have "mastered" Italian and "commenced" Modern Greek and German, all presumably before 1830.33 Paradoxically, then, Redhouse's formidable oriental learning, which it is so easy for a modern day observer to think of as "traditional," was a product of the new technical schools created by the Ottoman reformers, as well, to be sure, as of the larger and more amorphous "school" constituted by the Levantine babel of early nineteenth-century Istanbul, particulary as encountered on the Tersane side of the Golden Horn. That Redhouse was to make so much of a situation so little suited to the training of a scholar cannot fail to excite admiration, even though the costs of having to work in such conditions were to remain discernable in his later life and writings.

That Redhouse did make so much of his circumstances is perhaps more due to the contacts he formed than to the schools themselves, particularly given the still limited development of the latter at this time.34 In view of Redhouse's presumed ignorance of modern languages other than English at the date of his arrival in Istanbul, it is a logical supposition that his first contacts there would have been with other Englishmen. Such contacts might have included English officers employed in the Ottoman Naval Shipyards at Kasimpasa, the two engineering schools being close by, or just possibly Englishmen or other Europeans serving as instructors in the engineering schools. The documentation permits no more than speculation on these points.35

Nor, indeed, is there explicit indication in the sources thus far available of the identity of most of Redhouse's Ottoman contacts of these early years. The information contained in the accounts quoted above points directly, however, to several very important Ottomans to whose awareness Redhouse's position would necessarily have brought him.

Among the cadets, military officers and educators whom Redhouse must have encountered, the most significant figure is Bashoca Ishak Efendi.36 After playing an extremely significant role in diplomacy and military reform for some thirty years before the

fall of Selim III and living more or less in hiding for another decade after that, Ishak Efendi was from 1816 on both Mathematics Teacher and Translator of the Army Engineering School.37 From 1824 to about 1829 he held the post of Translator of the Imperial Divan in addition, thus becoming director of the recently formed Translation Office of the Sublime Porte, which in this period was both a school for translators and a translation office.38 As will become clear below, it was surely in connection with Ishak Efendi and this Translation Office that Redhouse became associated with the Ottoman Foreign Ministry following his initial service under the military authorities.39

The nature of the influence which Ishak Efendi was in position to exert on Redhouse illustrates more clearly than anything else the probably decisive significance of personal contacts in determining Redhouse's development in Istanbul. For aside from being one of the first important figures in the spread of modern technical education in Turkey, Ishak was one of the few Ottomans of his day with a wide- ranging knowledge of Western languages, to include Latin and Greek by some accounts, as well as of Turkish, Arabic, and Persian.40 In a way that was indispensable at such an early stage in the development of modern technical and scientific instruction among the Turks, Ishak Efendi combined linguistic and scientific interests in a career akin to that of a technical translator as much as to that of a scientist or engineer.41 Redhouse was for a long time to work in much the same medium. Overall, his career and Ishak's present a number of striking parallelisms, sometimes at wide intervals in time, the chief difference being that the ultimate emphasis of Ishak's activities fell on the technical side, of Redhouse's on the linguistic.42

The same combination of interests characterizes others of Redhouse's associates of this period. For example, Ishak Efendi was preceded both as translator of the Army Engineering School and as Translator of the Imperial Divan by one Bulgarzade Yahya Efendi.43 Yahya Efendi died in 1824, prior to Redhouse's arrival in Istanbul, but left several sons who were translators or military officers. One of these, Mehmed Ruhuddin, not only served in the Translation Office of the Sublime Porte but also in the 1 820's appears to have been a teacher in both the engineering schools, being transferred from the Army Engineering School to the Naval School at some point during Ishak Efendi's tenure as Translator of the Imperial Divan.44 Evidence contained in the




document which records this transfer suggests that it probably occurred soon after the destruction of the Janissaries.45 Assuming that Ruhuddin Efendi was serving at the Naval School in and after 1826, Redhouse must surely have known him there. This inference gains in interest from the fact that Ruhuddin Efendi was the father of Ahmed Vefik Papa (1823-91), who was destined to rise to the grand Vezirate and to enjoy one of the great literary careers of the century. He certainly knew Redhouse, the links between them proving in some degree lifelong.46

LInks with Ba~hoca Ishak and with the family of Bulgarzade Yahya Efendi are also attested by another of Redhouse's contacts of the late 1820's, the only one in fact that can be documented. The individual in question is Mehmed Namik Papa (c. 1804-92). Beginning his official career in 1816-17 as an apprentice in the Office of the Imperial Divan at he Sublime Porte, he continued his education there in the customary way, but added to the then usual studies that of French, which he undertook under "Yahya Efendi the Translator and some other Gentlemen."47 That Mehmed Namik was the first important "graduate" of the Translation Office is substantiated in general by his later career and in particular by the fact of his appointment as early as 1825-26 to the post of second translator at the negotiations which led up to the Treaty of Akkerman. For a Turk to appear in a diplomatic translatorship at this date was practically unprecedented. Following this mission, Namik transferred at the request of the then Minister of War, Husrev Papa, to the War Department, where he was assigned to translate from French into Turkish the books needed for the creation of the new Army being organized to replace the Janissaries. Namik maintained his formal connection with the Sublime Porte throughout his first two years in the War Department, officially entering military service only after that time.48 It must thus have been between 1826 and 1828 that Redhouse became aquainted with him, for Namik Papa was still

... a member of the Turkish Foreign Office when Mr Redhouse was engaged there to assist in translating into Turkish the English version of the Travels of Ibn- Batuta, presented to Sultan Mahmoud by King William IV.49

Aside from establishing the link with Namik Papa, this incident provides both an added indication that

Redhouse was known to Bashoca Ishak, then Translator of the Imperial Divan, and the earliest reference to a specific "literary" project on which Redhouse worked. As for Namik Pasa, he continued to serve in diplomatic posts for several more years after his transfer into the military service. During that time, his path and Redhouse's crossed again, evidently with significant results for them both. It is not clear whether they remained in contact in later life.50

Finally, if Redhouse was known before 1830 to the Ottomans named above, he was most likely known then, as he certainly was later, to Husrev Pasa, Minister of War during the period 1827-37.5' Such an association in these early years would have been highly significant not only because of Husrev's power or his interest in military reform, but also because he was the last great exponent of the tradition of educating large households of slave boys for official service and, incidentally, for the extension of their master's influence throughout the government. That Husrev was interested in making use of the kind of talent Redhouse possessed is clear from the use to which he put Namik Pasa (Namik Efendi or Bey at that time). In the late 1830's, Redhouse, too, would serve as a translator for Husrev. Earlier in that decade, Redhouse was to have a supervisory role in connection with one of the early Ottoman educational missions to Europe, missions in which Husrev was the first Ottoman official to take a significant interest.52 The only thing questionable about Redhouse's being known to Husrev is thus the date from which such an awareness can be assumed. If known to Husrev before 1830, then Redhouse himself may have either contributed to or benefited from the education given to Husrev's young slaves. This is an intriguing speculation, but one for which there is as yet no documentary support.

The technical skills which Redhouse brought with him to Istanbul thus rather clearly, if in ways that cannot now be reconstructed in detail, brought him to the attention of individuals then in the vanguard of the Ottoman reform movement. Their interest in him and his response to the stimuli they provided are largely to be explained by the fact that the nascent Ottoman technical elite was at this point only beginning to differentiate itself from what would later assume at least partially separate forms as a French- speaking, Western-oriented segment of the ruling class and a modernist literary elite. It was Redhouse's luck to land in Istanbul, fresh out of




Christ's Hospital but with a career as a linguist before him, at the moment of this conjuncture.

The path Redhouse followed was not, however, without detours. Indeed, in 1830, his life entered a new and particularly obscure phase. As usual, the published sources treat his movements in this period as due first and foremost to the dictates of his scholarly interests. Perhaps this is correct. But unless Redhouse had been very well rewarded for his first four years in Ottoman service, or unless he had some kind of fairly regular and gainful employment throughout this period, there is no clue as to how he financed his travels or kept body and soul together for the next several years.

In 1830, Redhouse made a "visit to the south of Russia," which, depending on the source, "gave an insight" into the Russian language53 or else resulted from his intention to study "the language of Eastern Turkey."54 It is impossible at present to know whether this trip was connected with some aspect of Ottoman-Russian relations at the time, with the ups- and-downs of official life in Istanbul, or with purely personal motives. Redhouse might have gone to Russia on a "mission" somehow related to diplomatic events following the Treaty of Adrianople.55 Perhaps more likely, Redhouse's departure from Istanbul could have resulted from a shakeup of 1828-29 in the Translation Office of the Sublime Porte. This coincided, supposedly thanks to the enmity of the then Reis ul-kuttab, Pertev Pasa, with Ishak Efendi's loss of the post of Translator of the Imperial Divan,56 an event which in turn might have made it necessary for Redhouse to get out of Istanbul for a while. All that can be said with certainty now is that Redhouse went to Russia by sea at the end of 1830 and returned, again by sea, in the latter part of 1833.57 While in Russia, he must have done most of the work on what was intended as his first lexicographical work, the Turkish-English-French dictionary supposedly "ready for the press" by 1834.58

The reasons for Redhouse's return to Istanbul at the end of 1833 are again unclear. He may have stopped in Istanbul only briefly,59 for after spending the winter of 1833-34 in Malta, he went on to London for the purpose, according to the published accounts, of publishing his dictionary. An arrangement was made with a publisher, thanks to the help of one of the ambassadors of the period, Nuri Efendi, but the appearance of Bianchi's Turkish-French dictionary just at that time frustrated the plan.60

Following this frustration, Redhouse remained in England for four more years. At this time, the

Ottoman system of permanent diplomatic repre- sentation in European capitals was being reactivated for the first time since the days of Selim 111,61 and Redhouse served the successive ambassadors in a variety of capacities, though whether or not this was his principal pursuit at the time is uncertain. That Namik Pasa, who came to London briefly in 1834, was the first of these ambassadors to arrive doubtless helped Redhouse in this transition. Namik Pasa entrusted to Redhouse the duty of supervising the educational mission discussd above in connection with Husrev Pasa.62 The students appear actually to have come to England with Namik's successor, Nuri Efendi. Redhouse's first duty was to teach them English in preparation for their dispersal to the various military installations to which they were destined;63 thereafter, his role became one of administration or coordination.64

While working with the student-officers, Redhouse kept up his contacts with the Ottoman ambassadors, who succeeded one another at rather frequent intervals, thus furthering both his links with Ottoman officialdom and his development in oriental studies. Reportedly, it was a shared interest in astronomy, with which Redhouse had been familiar since his Christ's Hospital days, that enabled him to establish a rapport with Nuri Efendi. Nuri then recommended Redhouse to his successor, Resid Bey, the future Mustafa Redid Pasa, whose "frequent guest" Redhouse became. Returning to Istanbul in 1837 to become Foreign Minister, Resid recommended Redhouse to the next ambassador, Sarnm Efendi, who studied French with Redhouse. Redhouse benefited from his contact with these men and their associates by adding

a fair knowledge of Arabic and Persian, as indepen- dent languages, to his former acquaintance with the use of words employed as Ottoman terms of art drawn from those languages.65

About 1837 or 1838, Redhouse returned to Istanbul on a special mission from Ambassador Sarim Efendi to Mustafa Resid Pasa. This time, Redhouse was to remain in the Ottoman Empire for fifteen years. Whether his returning in this way represented an act of free choice or a reflection of difficulties encountered in finding an acceptable place for himself in England is impossible to say.66 At any rate, Redhouse did not return to Istanbul alone, for in 1836, he married Jane Carruthers, daughter of Thomas Slade, Esq., of Deptford and




Liverpool.67 Little is known of her, except that she was or quickly became something of a linguist herself, passing as fluent in Turkish, Greek, and French by 1839.68

In Istanbul, Mustafa Resid Pasa and Nuri Efendi helped Redhouse to obtain a post in the Translation Office of the Sublime Porte, then headed by Safvet Efendi (later Pasa) as Translator of the Imperial Divan. Redhouse thus found himself working under one future Grand Vezir and alongside two others, for his colleagues in the office included Kegecizade Fuad and Ahmed Vefik. During 1838, Redhouse also turned again to translation and began a new lexicographical work.69

Redhouse must have remained attached to the Translation Office for about two years, but he became increasingly linked with naval affairs from the summer of 1839 on.70 The renewal of his association with the navy resulted from one of the diplomatic acquaintances he had made while in London; for in 1839, Sanm Efendi returned to Istanbul and introduced Redhouse to the then Grand Admiral, Ahmed Fevzi Pasa, with whom a British naval officer, Captain (later Admiral Sir) Baldwin Walker, was serving as an advisor for the reorganization of the Ottoman navy.

Ahmed Fevzi, acting out of enmity against Husrev Pasa, was shortly to take the fleet to Alexandria and join forces with Muhammad Ali Pasa, a defection which coincided with the defeat of the Ottoman army at Nezib and the death of Mahmud II to create one of the gravest crises of the century. As a result, Redhouse's involvement with naval affairs began to intensify, though it did not immediately become exclusive. The process began when Husrev Pasa, now Grand Vezir under the new sultan, Abdulmecid, selected Redhouse as his "confidential means of communication with Lord Ponsonby," the British Ambassador.7" For a time, this was only an additional duty. Indeed, a document of August 1839 speaks of Redhouse as employed as a translator in the Translation Office of the Porte and in confidential communications with various (?) em- bassies and indicates that he was to become a teacher in a school then being created for the training of government clerks.72 The mission of Walker, whom Redhouse presented to Husrev Pasa,73 and the growing likelihood of European intervention in the Ottoman-Egyptian conflict acted to draw Redhouse more and more, however, into naval affairs, a development reflected in a colorful report of the Austrian Internuncio, Baron von Sturmer. Re-

counting a scene of August 1839 in which Admiral Stopford, Commander-in-chief of the British Naval Forces in the Mediterranean, importuned Husrev Pasa to permit a number of French and English ships to enter the straits, Sturmer appended a "rather singular circumstance" of the meeting. As Husrev himself had related it to Sturmer,

. . . at the moment when they began to speak of the entry of the vessels, Mr. [Frederick] Pisani, First Dragoman of the English Embassy, withdrew from the room, and it was a certain Redaus, an Englishman attached to the service of Hosrew as an interpreter (and a rather bad fellow at that) who served as dragoman.74

Within a few more months, Redhouse's role in naval affairs must have been made official by his transfer from the Foreign Ministry to the Ottoman Navy Department, then under the Grand Admiral- ship of Damad Mehmed Said Pasa. Redhouse was given the posts of Naval Translator (Bahriye tercumani) and member in the newly created Naval Council (Bahriye $urasi ).75 His duties appear to have consisted principally in assisting Captain Walker.76 This must have entailed a great amount of technical translation, of which two examples, both dating from 1840, are preserved in the British Museum oriental manuscript collection: the British "Royal Navy Regulations" and the French "Forest Laws."77

Redhouse was to remain a member of the Naval Council for nearly two years, until its abolition shortly after the departure of Lord Ponsonby from Istanbul. During that time, he went on the first of two important special missions which he performed during the 1840's. For at the time of the international expedition against the Egyptian forces in Syria, undertaken in consequence of the London Conven- tion of 1840,78 Redhouse was "sent on a confidential mission to the Coast of Syria on the part of Lord Ponsonby and the Turkish Government" to serve as liaison among Sir Robert Stopford, supreme commander of the combined naval force, Baldwin Walker, serving as admiral of the Ottoman naval force participating in the operation, and Izzet Pasa, the Sultan's chief representative in Syria.79

Redhouse's contribution to the success of this expedition is a matter worthy of further investigation by military and diplomatic historians. It may have been considerable, though mention of him is conspicuously lacking in most of the published sources.80 It is clear that Ponsonby, unlike von




Stfirmer, appreciated Redhouse and his services during this campaign. Reporting Redhouse's departure from Istanbul, Ponsonby described him to Palmerston as "a very discreet clever man who will not act rashly."81 Later, in forwarding to Palmerston Redhouse's eyewitness account of the taking of Sidon, Ponsonby described Redhouse as "a gentleman employed in the Turkish service and a man of sense."82 At the beginning of November 1840, Redhouse must have been present, as Walker certainly was,83 at the siege of Acre. Indeed, Redhouse, with Izzet Pasa and Walker, had been one of the first to advocate that operation,84 probably the most decisive and dramatically successful of the campaign. This presumably explains the report that Ponsonby, on encountering Redhouse in London in 1854, greeted him as "The man who took Acre!"85 Following the victory alluded to in this hyperbole, Redhouse evidently continued to serve with Walker throughout the terminal phases of the campaign, accompanying the latter to Alexandria at the beginning of 1841 to conduct the Ottoman fleet, taken to Egypt by Ahmed Fevzi Pasa, back to Istanbul.86 On the recommendation of both the British ambassador and the Ottoman Grand Admiral, Redhouse was rewarded for his exertions with an Ottoman decoration, the ni~an-i iftihar in brilliants, in 1841.87

Following the Syrian campaign, Redhouse returned to his duties at the Navy Department in Istanbul. When the Naval Council was abolished about a year later he went back to the Foreign Ministry to serve once again in the Translation Office.88 In 1842, Stratford Canning, who had just arrived as British Ambassador, agreed with Redhouse's old acquaintance Sanm Efendi, then Foreign Minister, to use Redhouse again in the now familiar role of confidential medium of communication.89 Redhouse presumably remained a titular member of the Translation Office following this decision, which no doubt reflects Stratford's longstanding dislike of the embassy dragomans.

Also in 1842, Redhouse finished what was to become his first scholarly publication, a lexicon of Arabic and Persian words used in Ottoman Turkish, completed after four years of work in the mornings and evenings and on days off. The presentation manuscript, prepared at the expense of a number of Englishmen then in Istanbul in official capacities and now preserved in the Istanbul University Library, was submitted to the Sultan, who ordered the work printed. Such were the origins of the anonymously

published Muntahabdt-i Ligat-i Osmaniye,90 destined to pass through numerous reprintings and to become one of the most influential Turkish lexicographical works of the century.

By the time this manuscript had reached the hand of its imperial recipient, duty had once again called Redhouse away from Istanbul. The occasion this time was an attempt, through the joint mediation of England and Russia to negotiate a settlement of the Ottoman-Persian border. As British Commissioner for this mission, Stratford selected Captain (later General Sir) William Fenwick Williams, R.A., who had by then been in service at the Istanbul arsenal for some two years. Redhouse had assisted Williams during that time by translating the latter's reports on the Ottoman Artillery and the military schools and was thus a natural choice to accompany the newly appointed commissioner as interpreter. As Stratford wrote in his instructions to Williams at the time,

. . . You will be accompanied by MT Redhouse, who as interpreter and Secretary, can hardly fail to afford you all the assistance, which you may require for the due performance of your duties. Besides being acquainted with the Persian, and deeply versed in the Turkish language, he is familiar with those languages of Christendom, which are most used in the Levant. He has obtained permission from the Porte to join you on leave of Absence, and he is bound for the time to devote his services exclusively to the objects of your Commission, acting under your directions in the sole employment of Great Britain. The knowledge which you already possess of his valuable qualities will suffice to recommend him to your protection and regard.9'

In January of 1843 the representatives of the four governments proceeded to Erzurum, where their negotiations continued for the next four years. The British party included not only Williams and Redhouse, but also Redhouse's wife, as well as Robert Curzon (later Lord de la Zouche).92 As its plenipotentiary, the Porte first designated Nuri Efendi, but he died in Erzurum93 and was succeeded by one Enveri Efendi.

As in the case of the Syrian expedition, it is exceedingly difficult to recover Redhouse's traces during this period from published sources. The only participant to memorialize the negotiations in print appears to have been Curzon, who gives the impression that he found them tedious at best. He never mentions Redhouse, though he recounts one




session in which it was certainly Redhouse who figures as "the Dragoman."94 A better picture of what took place emerges from the manuscript records of the British Commission, the bulk of which are in Redhouse's hand and reflect the centrality of his role as scribe, interpreter, and- by extension-peace- maker. His maturation as a linguist is also reflected in his translations from Ottoman Turkish and Persian into English and in the proces-verbaux of each session, which he kept in diplomatic French of a near-perfect standard.95 For the final agreement, Redhouse is reported to have drawn up Turkish, Persian, and French texts which were ratified without alteration.96

In addition, Redhouse wrote and published his second book while at Erzurum. This was a grammar of the Ottoman language, published in Paris in 1846 under the title Grammaire raisonnee de la langue ottomane. As he was often to do in his later lexicographic work, he also began a parallel work in Turkish, intended for Ottoman students. Once again, however, the publication of a rival work, in this case the Kavaid-i Osmaniye of Fuad and Cevdet, led him to abandon this project short of completion.97

Redhouse's stay at Erzurum was thus highly productive. But it was also a period of great hardship. This was due not just to the setting or the duty, but also to the way in which he was handled by the British authorities under whom he was serving. Writing in May 1847 just before leaving Erzurum to express his "entire satisfaction" with Redhouse's services, Williams concluded as follows:

When I state to Your Lordship [Lord Cowley, then Minister ad interim in Istanbul], that MT Redhouse has not received, either directly or indirectly, any Salary from this Commission since it left Constan- tinople-that his wife, after going to the expense of a journey to Ezeroom, in order to avoid the great inconvenience of a long separation from her husband, was obliged to seek in England medical advice for the evils induced by this rigid climate-when I state these facts, I trust that any appeal on my part to Your Lordship's protection, or to the liberality of Her Majesty's Government, for MT Redhouse, would [not] be considered by Your Lordship as misplaced.98

Six months later, Redhouse received 640 pounds for his four years of service at Erzurum.99 He protested that this was less than he would have earned had he remained in Istanbul. But Cowley, as minister ad interim, preferred to leave the decision on whether to

give him additional satisfaction to Stratford. The latter gratified Redhouse after another fourteen months with 485 pounds morel10 and subsequently assisted him in persuading the Foreign Office to buy sixty copies of the Grammaire raisonnee for distribution to the embassy and consular offices in Ottoman territory. 10' It would be hard to find another example that better reflects the difficulties of British officials of this period in facing up to the costs of the kind of dragoman service they wanted and had gotten from Redhouse at Erzurum.102

From Erzurum, Redhouse returned to Istanbul and the Translation Office at the Porte, again taking up his role as "confidential medium of communication."'03 In the same period, he became a member of the Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences (Encumen-iDanie), created in 1850,104 and also, he later maintained, organized a library in the Transla- tion Office. By the time of Redhouse's final departure from Istanbul in 1853, members of the office had subscribed some 500 pounds for this library, which continued to flourish thereafter.105

The sojourn in Erzurum having undermined Redhouse's health as well as that of his wife, chronic health problems finally forced him to return to England on the eve of the Crimean War. Once again, in consequence, his life came to a turning point. Up to this time, the emphasis of Redhouse's career had been on practical service to the Ottomans and to the development of Ottoman-British relations. Hence- forth, the emphasis would shift increasingly to the scholarly exploitation of the intellectual capital which he had accumulated during his years in Ottoman service. Redhouse's most important contributions to the modernization of Turkey and to the development of cordial relations between the Turks and Western nations still lay in the future, and they were to be ultimately more positive and lasting than those of many of the officials whom he had thus far served.

III. REDHOUSE'S "ENGLISH PERIOD," 1853-92

Although Redhouse did not return to England with the intention of remaining there permanently, a year's stay left him with the impression that his health would not permit him to go back to Istanbul. 106 He accordingly accepted the recently vacated post of Oriental Translator to the Foreign Office. This post, which he retained as late as 1890, was essentially a sinecure.107 In 1857, Redhouse found himself involved in diplomatic negotiations




one last time, for he was then sent to Paris to assist in the conclusion of the Anglo-Persian treaty of that year. As far as can be determined, this was the last time Redhouse left England, and following his return he never held any other position except that of Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society (1861-64).

In the long run, official or public responsibilities ob- viously occupied only a small part of Redhouse's time, although there are indications that a sense of economic uncertainty might have led him to take on more such duties, if offered the chance. In 1857, the former British Commissioner at the Erzurum negotiations, now Major General Sir William Fenwick Williams, Baronet, of Kars, submitted a memorandum to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, to explain Redhouse's past services and justify more copius remuneration for him. Clarendon's note on the back of this memorandum sums up quite succinctly the limits of Redhouse's ability to claim further assistance from the British Government:

I do not see what more can be done for Mr Redhouse. The greater part if not the whole of his services were performed on the account of the Turkish Govt. in whose employment he was, and the F.O. now pay him ?400 a year for doing little or nothing. We moreover have taken many copies of his works. 108

Service as Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society brought Redhouse an extra 90 pounds per year during his rather brief tenure.109 By that time, he was also in receipt of a pension of some 240 pounds per year from the Ottoman government.0 By contemporary standards, Redhouse was thus hardly penniless, but his correspondence continued for many years to attest to a sense of financial pressure.111

Where Redhouse encountered significant opportunities following his return from Istanbul was not in official or public service, but rather in the field of scholarly publication, in which the Crimean War and the consequent intensification of interest in the Ottomans created a demand for his works. With the outbreak of the war, he brought out "a Turkish vade mecum of the Ottoman colloquial language in European characters, for the use of the British officers."1 12 This consisted of grammar, vocabulary, and "a few familiar dialogues" in a work of pocket- size. In addition, the preface contained a promise which was to occupy Redhouse for the rest of his life:

... For the information of those who may wish afterwards to penetrate deeper into the arcana of this really beautiful tongue, a series of more complete and scientific works is in course of preparation.1 13

Redhouse's efforts to carry out this promise began immediately, for in 1856, again in response to the demand generated by war, he prepared a small Ottoman-English and English-Ottoman dictionary of some ten thousand definitions in each part.

The end of the war led to a collapse of demand for these works"4 and might well have made it difficult for Redhouse to carry on, had it not been for the evangelical enthusiasm which continued and in fact increased in the climate of optimism created by the Reform Decree of 1856. Partly because of this enthusiasm and partly because of dissatisfaction with the antiquated Turkish version of the New Testament which had thus far been in use but had sold out during the war,'15 the British and Foreign Bible society in London engaged Redhouse to produce a revised translation. His efforts resulted in the appearance in 1855 of two bilingual versions of the Gospel According to Matthew, one English-Ottoman and the other Italian-Ottoman, followed in 1857 by the complete revision of the earlier translation. In the meantime, Redhouse had also translated Paley's Evidences of Christianity for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

Redhouse's future, however, was not to lie in work of such a pious character. The missionaries had reservations about his work as a Bible translator, first on the ground that he did not know Greek and Hebrew, secondly, on the ground that he had not, in their opinion, achieved a more idiomatic style than that of the earlier translation."16 The work of Bible translation went on, but without Redhouse.

What linked Redhouse's name in an enduring way to missionary activities in Turkey was rather a "secular literature project," initially promoted by the American missionaries in Istanbul as a way of spreading the knowledge of English. This project was brought to the attention of the British public through a Turkish Missions Aid Society, which was specially formed to support the activities of the American missionaries and which attempted to gain the backing of the British government for the project as a means of counteracting French influence in the Ottoman Empire.117 The Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, was cool to the idea18 but acted in such a way as to assure Redhouse's connection with it, first by requesting him and Sir Culling Eardley, an officer of the Turkish Missions Aid Society, to report on the best means of executing the project and then, in response to one of their suggestions, by offering 300 pounds on condition that an equal sum be raised and the total used to buy up the remaining copies of




Redhouse's English and Turkish Dictionary of 1856 for distribution in the Ottoman Empire.119

The missionaries of course had their sights set higher than that. A year later, they got the support they needed from William Wheelwright, a wealthy merchant from Newburyport, Massachusetts, resident in London. Wheelwright bore the entire expense of a project to which Redhouse contributed several works, including the most significant of the entire series, his Lexicon of English and Turkish, intended specifically for Turkish-speaking users and first published in 1861. Thanks to Wheelwright's munifi- cence, Redhouse received 600 pounds for the permanent copyright of this work, while the American Mission in Istanbul received the plates from which the dictionary had been printed, as well as a number of copies for sale.120

From that point on, the "secular literature project" became self-sustaining, the proceeds from sale of the publications being restricted, under the original conditions of the gift, from use for any other types of publication or for other missionary purposes. The profits from the 1861 dictionary and other early "bi-lingual works" financed a second, slightly revised edition of the Lexicon in 1877. In the anticipation that this, too, would make money, Edwin E. Bliss of the Istanbul mission reached an agreement with Redhouse under which the latter was to prepare a Turkish-English dictionary as a companion to the earlier work, receiving a payment of 500 pounds in return. Such was the background of what finally appeared after many delays, some of them caused by the Ottoman censors, as the Turkish- English Lexicon of 1890.121 The process of self- perpetuation continued thereafter, making possible numerous reprintings of both dictionaries and the subsequent revisions, or more accurately replace- ments, which have kept Redhouse "in print" down to the present day.122

Meanwhile, the scope of Redhouse's scholarly endeavors had grown far beyond the publication program of the missionaries. On one hand, he had undertaken lexicographical projects of even greater scope; on the other, he had produced works of various sizes on other subjects ranging from astronomy and anthropology to pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. Many of these miscellaneous works were patently of a more polemical or speculative than scholarly character. In general, they seem to have exerted little lasting influence, and some of them have been justly and severely criticized.'23 After almost a century and with so little documentation to

clarify Redhouse's motives, it is difficult to see why he published several of these works. Some may have represented sidelines of his lexicographical researches or even reflections of technical interests left over from his youth.'24 Others may have originated as diversions of a man who had not always been free to give bent to his literary interests, or partisan statements of a committed individual. In either case, time and circumstance appear to have made the elderly Redhouse indifferent to the possibility of adverse criticism.125 It may well be, as will be argued below, that the real value of these works lies in what they tell of Redhouse's personal values and ideals. Clearly, however, lexicography provided the focal point of Redhouse's work, and it is in relation to the later projects of that type that the aspirations and achievements of his last years can best be appreciated. Aside from the Turkish-English Lexicon of 1890, there were two such projects, both of monumental scope, and both left unfinished.

Redhouse began the first of these in 1864. This was intended as an extensive Ottoman dictionary for Turkish use. Redhouse appears to have been motivated to undertake such a project principally by the fact that none of the works then available in Turkish-translations of Arabic and Persian works or vocabularies along the lines of his own Muntaha- bat-amounted to proper Turkish dictionaries.'26 He described his project in two letters written in 1867 to Fuad Papa, then Foreign Minister and an acquaintance since the 1830's when the two had served together in the Translation Office. Redhouse explained that his work was intended to include in alphabetical order all Ottoman words, whether of Turkish, Arabic, Persian or European origin, including technical terms. The etymology of each word was to be given, and a special system of pointing was to be used to indicate the exact pronunciation. Redhouse also sought approval to give the work a title which would allude to the name of the then reigning sultan (Kulliydzt-i aziziyefi )l-Li4ati )I-Osmaniye) and requested aid for the printing of the manuscript, then about one- fifth completed. As he did so, he "dared to suggest" that an increase in his pension from 20 pounds per month to 40 would enable him better to procure "the necessary aids for my studies" and "the care required by my age."127

Redhouse must have received no response at this time, for two years later he appealed to the Ottoman ambassador in London, Musurus Papa. By that time, he had completed four volumes, containing definitions through the end of the letter cim. Lacking means to




have these volumes printed in London, Redhouse now expressed willingness to donate them to the Ottoman Government in return for a gratification of 100 pounds. He also proposed, in return for a doubling of his pension to 40 pounds, to complete the project in ten volumes at the rate of one volume per year. Musurus Papa wrote to Istanbul, and several months later Ali Papa, Foreign Minister and Grand Vezir, granted the request. 128 Redhouse was to continue this project until about 1885 before giving it up. He had by then filled nine or ten volumes without getting beyond the letter ja.'29 These volumes were sent to Istanbul, but their whereabouts is now unknown.

About the same time that Redhouse began this work, he also began a comparable Ottoman-English work, carrying the two forward in tandem and enlarging their scope as he went.'30 As he ultimately conceived it, the Ottoman-English work was to be

a thesaurus of the Arabic, Persian, Ottoman, and Eastern Turkish languages, explained in English, giving all the collected scientific terms of religion, law, mathematics, astronomy, star-names, anatomy, medi- cine, materia medica, and Turkish nautical terms, with illustrations of every word in the Qur~an, all the collected Arabian proverbs, specimens of Arabian poetry and rhetoric, copious citations from the Persian poets, and more or less exemplifications of the two varieties of Turkish. Completed it will, perhaps, reach to 200,000 words ....131

But Redhouse was to abandon this work, too. The passage of years left him increasingly in doubt of living to finish two such thorough salutes to the composite character of the Ottoman language, and interest of the American missionaries in Istanbul in publishing a work of smaller scope offered him a more practicable alternative.

Indeed, Redhouse must have given himself more or less completely to work on this alternative project, the Lexicon of 1890, at some point early in the 1880's, for in 1881 he wrote as follows to Professor E. B. Cowell of Cambridge:

... I have a heavy task on me, at which I now work from 4 A.M. to 6 P.M. (with two hours interval from 8 to 10). At least three more years must I go on so, and I take no holiday at any time. Being in my seventieth year, you can judge what are my chances. The work I am doing is a Turkish-English Lexicon, which will contain rather over 100,000 words, of which about

33,000 are written, and I have proofs of 100 pages .... 132

Completing the manuscript for this work after four years of labor, Redhouse obtained permission to present the ten colossal manuscript volumes of the unfinished "Thesaurus Dictionary of Arabic, Persian and Turkish (Ottoman and Eastern), explained in English," to the British Museum. As he did so, he appended a preface in which he expressed the wish that

it may prove useful to young Oriental students in various ways, partly as an inducement to do better, and partly as a warning against attempting too much.133

When he wrote these words in 1885, Redhouse's scholarly activity was still not at an end. Despite problems with his eyesight, he continued not only to work on the proofs of the 1890 Lexicon but also to prepare other publications and to study still other languages.'34 The abandonment of work on the two unfinished manuscripts was, however, the closest he was to get to the intended culmination of his career. The incompleteness of those works implied that the most ambitious parts of his scholarly efforts, like virtually all of his official service in the East, would remain obscure and little known to those who came after him.

His last years did, however, bring Redhouse honor and ample reason for contentment. His dictionary of 1890, published with the editorial assistance of Ahmed Vefik Papa among others,'35was a major event in the annals of scholarship, whatever the disappointments that lay behind it. By that time Redhouse had received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Cambridge in 1884 and been made first a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 1885 and a Knight Commander in 1888. So far as can now be determined, he continued, as he had in Istanbul, to enjoy a considerable acquaintance among persons sharing his interests, including members of the Ottoman Embassy staff, a smattering of dilettantes and diplomats, and a number of notables or future notables of oriental studies, such as E. J. W. Gibb and the youthful E. G. Browne.'36 Widowed in 1887, Redhouse married Eliza Colquhoun in 1888. She was the daughter of an amateur linguist of Redhouse's aquaintance, Sir Patrick Colquhoun (1815-91), a lawyer by profession, whom Redhouse had first met in Istanbul in the 1840's.'37 Sir Patrick was, moreover, a man of means, and the size of the




estate which passed to Eliza at his death leaves little doubt that Redhouse's last days were untroubled by financial worries.' 38 At her death in 1923, Lady Redhouse bequeathed 2,000 pounds to Christ's Hospital to endow a Colquhoun Redhouse Scholarship for university study,' 39 thus repaying Redhouse's debt to the institution which had, with such unforeseeable consequences, given him his start in life. How that happened was one of a number of things that the elderly Redhouse, recognized at last as both a gentleman and a scholar, did not trouble to divulge.

IV. A PERFECT ORIENTALIST?

What has been said thus far clearly does not dispel all the mystery about Redhouse's life, and certain features of his work-the disparity between his aims and achievements or, even more, the bizarre character of some of his publications-still make it difficult to know how to evaluate his career. While all such questions cannot yet be resolved, certain conclusions are nonetheless warranted.

One senses, first, that the mystery about Redhouse's personality and about many of the biographical facts has at times a significance of its own. True, it is due in part to fortuitous circumstances, such as the fact that he left no known surviving descendants or relatives, other than his second wife, to tell of him as a person, or that so little of his correspondence can now be recovered. But the circumstances that obscure Redhouse's traces at so many points were not solely fortuitous. There were occasions when anonymity was desirable or even became a necessity for him. Many events of his early years, in particular, must later have seemed to him just as well passed over in silence. More generally, by spending so much of his life either at the fringes or quite outside of English society, by making his way for so long in an Islamic society to which he could never be more than marginal, by serving as a "confidential medium," and by dividing his literary output, parts of it anonymous or unpublished, between two different cultures, Redhouse literally did become invisible to some degree, even to those of his contemporaries most interested in the fields of his endeavors.

The same forces of circumstance which thus made Redhouse "invisible" also seem, rather understandably, to have made him into an eccentric with a lasting sense of insecurity. The eccentricity can be detected in details as varied as his views about the "Eastern Question," some of which will be

mentioned below, or his passion for counting things like the number of words defined in his dictionaries,'40 the couplets in his translation of Rumi's Mesnevi,'41 or the divine names mentioned in the Qur)dn.142 Eccentricity and insecurity both left their mark in the stuffiness- even by contemporary standards- of much of his prose143 and in his response to the honors that came to him with age. These at last gave him an image that he could project before the world, and he evidently felt a need to do exactly that. He did so, for example, when he pasted a photograph and the account of himself from Debrett's Peerage into the manuscript of his great "Thesaurus" presented to the British Museum. He also did likewise on other occasions in the same period, as when he presented a book that he owned to E. J. W. Gibb.'44

The same factors that made Redhouse eccentric also affected his intellectual development, enabling him to achieve an extraordinary mastery in Ottoman Turkish but denying him the more balanced perspective that a systematic education might have given him. As much as his early mentors in Istanbul and more than many of his academic contemporaries in Europe, Redhouse could only have become what he did by being largely self-taught and by branching out, or being pushed out, into untrodden pathways. The intellectual costs of such a formation are no doubt largely to blame for the debatable quality and miscellaneous character of Redhouse's occasional publications. This intellectual eccentricity comes through particularly clearly in some of the more unrealistic expressions of his Turkophilia and Russophobia145 and in some of his views on the early history of the Turkic peoples and languages, 146

although Redhouse was hardly unique among serious scholars of Turkish in getting carried away with speculations of that type. While the colossal works of scholars then studying other Islamic languages offered a challenge to which some scholar of Turkish might eventually have responded anyway, the same lack of persective, perhaps the same tendency to a "Turkocentric" view of things, may also have helped draw Redhouse into the later and unwisely vast lexicographical projects.

Redhouse's life thus hardly provides an ideal model for the modern-day student, and his intellectual formation cannot be said to provide any model at all, except as concerns the obvious benefits to be derived in the study of a language from prolonged residence in a country where that language is spoken. Yet, Redhouse did gain certain benefits from the peculiar path he followed, and they were benefits which an




ideal academic formation could not have assured. The most fundamental point in this regard is that

Redhouse really was, in other and broader senses than the one used thus far, a "medium of communication" between cultures. Indeed, his "invisibility" is a product to a degree not just of the confidentiality of so many of the messages he bore or of the anonymity of parts of his work, but rather of the very efficiency with which he and his works served this end of intercultural exchange. Even if it was circumstance that thrust this mediatory role on him initially, it seems with his development as a scholar to have inspired in him a lasting commitment to the removal of barriers to communication between the two cultures he served. Such a feeling can be detected even behind the polemical statements and publications which he produced in times of particular excitement. In cooler moments, this commitment led him to justify others of his works by a desire to acquaint Europe with the thought of Asia'47 or to make the English language accessible to the subjects of the sultan.'48 On other occasions again, it brought him into the fray to defend Ottoman literature from being dismissed as solely derivative and the language from being denigrated for its composite character,149 or to combat misrepresentations of Islam by uninformed writers.'50 The fact that he not only worked with one of the early Ottoman student missions in England but also in later correspondence advocated an expansion in the scale of such exchanges similarly reflects his views. 151 His commitment was, moreover, a conscious one:

I willingly own enthusiasm in my pleading for the Ottomans, and sorrow for the injustice done them by all Europe, partly through ignorance, chiefly through religious hate and bigotry.

Forty or fifty years ago, as a youth, I fondly hoped religious hate was a thing of the past in Europe, and I laboured hard to persuade the Ottomans it was so. I believe I made many a convert, and Turkey was becoming willing to fraternize with Christian Europe. But bigots will never be extinct, nor hypocrites. Europe and England have been fanned into a glowing furnace of the fiercest hate for all things Ottoman .... That is my sole quarrel with England-want of tolerance, of consideration.152

With this statement and other evidence to the same effect, Redhouse's life and work begins to fall into a pattern in which many of his idiosyncrasies have a meaningful place and in relation to which his positive

accomplishments come into full relief. The foundation of Redhouse's entire career was

manifestly the phenomenal proficiency in Ottoman Turkish which he aquired thanks to his extraordinary early experiences and to which his work in other languages could never be more than secondary. "It is improbable," E. G. Browne later wrote, "that any European ever had so complete and commanding a knowledge of the Ottoman Turkish language as Sir James Redhouse."'I53 To claim absolute preeminence in this way is to beg controversy; yet Redhouse's record as a scholar of Turkish is in many ways unique. While in Ottoman service, he proved himself able to write effectively in even the highest Ottoman style and to translate texts of repellingly technical nature into Ottoman. In the same period, he produced a lexicographical work, the Muntahabat, used in school by generations of Ottoman students as they strove to master the Arabic and Persian elements in their language,'54 and the Grammaire raisonnee, which included a systematic explanation of Turkish vowel harmony at a time when the works of experts did not always give a recognizable picture of it in any sense, let alone define the rules governing the phenomenon.'55 Until the linguistic reforms of the republican era, his Lexicon of 1861 remained "the chief channel through which Ottoman students ... learn English.''156 The Turkish and English Lexicon of 1890, the most complete Ottoman dictionary ever published,'57 remains indispensible for Ottoman studies and has provided the foundation recently for an up-to-date dictionary of the Turkish language as it has now come to be. Had he succeeded in completing his two great unfinished projects, Redhouse would in addition have provided the Ottomans with their first exhaustive dictionary, in the modern sense of that term, and the international scholarly community with perhaps the most comprehensive of the large lexicographical works then being produced for the major Islamic languages.

In the prefaces to his earlier lexicographical and grammatical works, Redhouse expressed his sense of the pioneering nature of his work, at times almost to the point of vaunting.158 Subsequently such expressions disappeared, to be replaced in the preface to the unfinished "Thesaurus" by a note of frustrated resignation. Few if any of his contemporaries were in a position to perceive it fully, but Redhouse was indeed a pioneer in removing the barriers to mutual compre- hension between the Turks and the English-speaking world; and even still, despite his frustrations, no one has done more to remove those barriers than he. It is




only appropriate that Redhouse's name has been perpetuated as the one most associated with Turkish- English and English-Turkish lexicography. It is fitting now that his life, his achievements, and the spirit that motivated him become more fully known.

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Names of Archives and Special Collections are Followed by *

ABCFM * = American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Papers of the Western Turkey Mission, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Volume numbers will be cited according to the system of continuous numbering applied by Houghton Library, rather than according to the original system of the ABCFM.

BBA * = Basbakanlik (Prime Ministers') Ar- chives, Istanbul

Bell. = Belleten, journal of the Turkish His- torical Society, Ankara

BMC = British Museum, Department of Printed Books, General Catalogue of Printed Books, London, Photolithographic ed. of 1955, vol. 199, cols. 783-85, listing of works by R.

C. = Cumadelthire, Sixth month of the hicri calendar

Cev. Har. = Foreign Ministry papers in Cevdet Collection, BBA

FO * = Foreign Office Papers, Public Record Office, London

Har. * = Hariciye (Foreign Ministry) Archives, Istanbul

Ist. U. Lib. * = Istanbul University Library JRAS = Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society M = Muharrem, first month of the hicri

calendar NMM = unsigned article entitled "James William

Redhouse, K.C.L.S.," New Monthly Magazine, June 1880, 662-69

PTF = Jean Deny, "L'Osmanli [sic] moderne et le Turk de Turquie," in Jean Deny et al., ed., Philologiae Turcicae Funda- menta, Wiesbaden, 1959, 182-239, including extensive bibliography, 221ff.

R = Redhouse OWSA = "Other Works by the Same Author, to

be had of Trubner & Co.," list opposite title page of Redhouse, The Turkish Vade-Mecum... , London, 2d ed., 1877

S = Safer, second month of the hicri calendar

SRO * = Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh TKE = Tercume kalemi evraki (Papers of the

Translation Office), Har. TY = Turkish Manuscripts (Taurkqe yazmalan),

Ist. U. Lib. Z = Zilhicce, twelth month of the hicri

calendar

1 Probably the most widely accessible published source is the article by C. Alexander Harris in the DNB, XVII, 1896. The fullest published account is the unsigned article in NMM, which is almost certainly based on an interview. Other published sources include Debrett's Peerage, 1886 (the article on R. being inserted opposite the title page in BM Or. MS. 2959, "Fifteen Chapters and Part-Chapters ... of a Thesaurus Dictionary. . . ," vol. I); Foreign Office List, 1892, 179; the unkind obituary by R[obert] N[eedham] C[ust] in JRAS, 1892, 160-61; Sidney Balister, "A Great English Scholar in Turkey: Sir James Redhouse," Asiatic Review, XXXVIII, 1942, 173-76 (inaccurate); some mention in Harold Bowen, British Contributions to Turkish Studies, London, 1945, 44-47; and Redhouse Yeni Turkfe- Ingilizce Sozlik, New Redhouse Turkish-English Diction- ary, Istanbul, 1968, x-xiii.

2 See Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789-1922. Princeton, 1980.

3 In the process of gathering these materials, I have been aided by many individuals and institutions. I am most obligated to Professor V. L. Menage of the School of Oriental and African Studies, who first called my attention to R. in 1966, and R. S. Colquhoun, Esq., of London for imaginative aid and suggestions. Professors Allan Cunning- ham of Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Roderic H. Davison of George Washington University, Washington, D.C., kindly read and commented on an earlier version of this paper. I am grateful to the Librarian of Harvard College for permission to examine papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, now in Houghton Library, also to the librarians of the British Library, London, and the Keepers of the Archives and of the Western Manuscripts Collection, Cambridge University, for assistance in various of their collections. The staff of the Royal Commission of Historical Manuscripts, London, and the Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, have been of great help in my not very fruitful search for personal papers. Doq. Dr. Inci Enginun of Istanbul University, Dona S. Straley and James Gehlhar, both now of Edinburgh University, Dr. and Mrs. Michael Milgrim, of Pahlavi University in Shiraz, and Mrs. Judith- Ann Corrente of Harvard have all helped me in collecting



FINDLEY: Sir James W Redhouse 589

some of the more widely scattered materials. Numbers of other archivists, librarians, and scholars have responded to my inquiries; their contributions will be acknowledged singly in the relevant notes. Those who helped by proving that a given item of information did not exist, added nothing significant, or was incorrect,will for the sake of brevity, not always be mentioned, but are here assured of my thanks, as are those who provided information going beyond what could be included here. I am grateful also to all those members of the Redhouse and Colquhoun families who took the trouble to respond to my letter of inquiry. Various

aspects of my research have been facilitated by a Grant-in- Aid in the Humanities (1973-74) at Ohio State University.

4 For an obituary of Bianchi (1783-1864), see C. Barbier de Maynard in Journal Asiatique, ser. 6, V, 1865, 175-82.

5 NMM, 662. 6 Christ's Hospital was founded in the sixteenth century

on the site of the former Franciscan Monastery in the City of London, in response to the noticeable increase in unattended misery and suffering following the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. Quite early, it became a foundling hospital and, as a consequence of that, quickly a school more than a hospital. With time, in fact, the orphanage came to contain a complex of schools. The growth of Christ's Hospital over the centuries and the swelling of its endowments was due largely to the members of the Corporations and other dignitaries of the City of London, who for the most part held the governance of Christ's Hospital in their hands from the beginning. R. owed his admission to the orphanage to such an individual. Additional details on the institution are to be found in E. H. Pearce, Annals of Christ's Hospital, London, 1908.

7 Letter of 1 April 1971 from A. E. J. Hollaender, Keeper of Manuscripts, Guildhall Library, London, quoting Guildhall Lib. Ms. 12,818 / 14, fol. 100 a-b.

8 Hollaender Letter of 1 April 1971, quoting Guildhall Lib. Ms. 12,811 / 17, p. 294.

9 NMM, 662. 10 William Sandell Angill (or Angell) was in addition a

member of the Clothworkers' Company, resident in Cornhill in the City of London (letter of 20 Aug. 1973 from the Keeper of MSS., Guildhall Lib.; letter of 26 Sept. 1973 from John Reed, Clerk to the Clothworkers' Company, Clothworkers' Hall).

1Oa Representing one of the school's few survivals from Tudor times, the uniform of a Christ's Hospital boy consists even today chiefly of an ankle-length blue coat lined in yellow. Under this, according to Pearce's description (Annals, 182-89, with illustration opposite page 185) is worn the yellow, a long smock referred to in the older sources as a "petticoat." Pearce states that the yellow color

was adopted in the seventeenth century on the ground that it was more repellent to vermin than white, and that the wearing of trousers under the "yellow" represented an eighteenth century concession, initially limited to the sick. Down to 1857, the uniform included also a tiny cap worn on the crown of the head. The "mathemats" were singled out from all the rest of the "blues" by special badges of a silverish color (ibid., 132-33). Changing one's costume was at times taken as pretext for dismissal. That R. had committed this offense is cited in the record of his dismissal, quoted above in the text.

1 Ibid., 163 ff., 358 ff. 12 Dates from NMM, 662. 13 Pearce, Annals, ch. vi. 14 Ibid., 131. 15 Ibid., 100-1; that this was still the custom as late as

1837 is attested on p. 129. 16 Ibid., 129. 17 Ibid., 129-30. 18 Ups and downs over time in the quality of the

instruction in Latin offered in the Mathematical School can be followed in ibid., 108, 125-26, 129-30.

19 Ibid., 161-62. 20 Ibid., 130. 21 NMM, 662. 22 Captain Adolphus Slade, Records of Travels in

Turkey, Greece, etc., and of a Cruise in the Black Sea with the Capitan Pacha, London, 1833, republished 1854, I [?], 56; cited with date in Bowen, British Contributions, 44-45.

23 Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, Princeton, 1963, 45.

24 Possibly, Slade was confused and the name Mustafa referred to another person. The school had already had more than one teacher named Mustafa (see Stanford J. Shaw, Between Old and New; the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1789-1807, Cambridge, Mass., 1971, 438 n. 31, and Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, London, 2d ed., 1968, 49).

25 NMM, 662. Before 1836, all references to an Ottoman "Foreign Office" are anachronistic. Responsibility for the conduct of foreign relations lay chiefly in the hands of the Reis ul-kuttab, who was the head of the Grand Vezir's Chancery at the Sublime Porte and would in 1836 be turned into a Foreign Minister; but the only component of the central organization of the future ministry in existence before that date was the Translation Office of the Sublime Porte, founded in 1821 and headed by the Translator of the Imperial Divan; see Carter V. Findley, "The Foundation of the Ottoman Foreign Ministry, The Beginnings of Bureau- cratic Reform under Selim III and Mahmfid II" (cited below as "Foundation"), International Journal of Middle East Studies, III, 1972, 395 ff. Practically speaking,




sources linking R. to the "Foreign Office" at any time before 1836 link him specifically to the Translation Office.

26 On these schools, see Osman Ergin, Istanbul Mektepleri ve Ilim Terbiye, ve San Jat Muesseseleri dolayisile Turkiye Maarif Tarihi (cited below as Maarif Tarihi), Istanbul, 1939-43, II, 264-80; Mehmed Esad, Mir'at-i Muhendis- hane-i Berri-i Humayun (cited below as Mir)at), Istanbul, 1312 / 1894-95; Shaw, Between Old and New, 144-49, 158-60. I have not been able to examine Ali Alpagut and Fevzi Kurdoglu, Deniz Mektepleri Tarihqesi.

27 Mehmed Esad, Mir'at, 26-27, 42; Shaw, Between Old and New, 147.

28 Pearce (Annals, 130) describes the Christ's Hospital curriculum as a Royal Commission found it in 1837; Ergin (Maarif Tarihi, II, 270) quotes Charles MacFarlane's account of that of the Naval Engineering School in 1841. Bonnycastle's Algebra appears in both descriptions, as do references to Euclid, though the latter do not point unequivocally to a common text.

29 The use of foreign instructors is discussed in a number of sources; e.g., Shaw, Between Old and New, 158-60; Ismail Hakki Uzun9araili, Osmanli Devletinin Merkez ve Bahriye Te~kildti (hereafter cited as Merkez), Ankara, 1948, 507-09; Mehmed Esad, Mir'at, 369-75 (various Mid-nineteenth-century instructors); Ergin, Maarif Tarihi, II, 264 ff.

30 Ergin, Maarif Tarihi, II, 265-72. 31 The shift to English occurred c. 1848: Uzunqarsili,

Merkez, 510-11. 32 Ergin, Maarif Tarihi, II, 271; Mehmed Esad, Mireat,

58-60, quoting a contemporary description of Ishak Efendi's method of instruction; Uzun9araili, Merkez, 508- 10, implying that most of the practical instruction was given by the foreign instructors, when there were such.

33 NMM, 662-63. 34 Ergin (Maarif Tarihi, II, 315-21) places considerable

emphasis on educational opportunities outside established schools, particularly to include associations with the learned, as indispensible for anyone seeking to acquire a broad education in Istanbul in this period.

35 The diplomatic isolation of the Porte at this period in fact diminishes the likelihood that any Europeans were serving in these capacities, unless perhaps renegades or adventurers not acting on the orders of any European government.

36 On Ishak, see Faik Re~it Unat, "Ba~hoca Ishak Efendi," Bell., XXVIII, 1964, 89-1 15, as well as Shaw, Between Old and New, chs. ii and xii, and pp. 439-40 n. 9.

37 Mehmed Esad, Mir'at, 35; Unat, 106, 108; some accounts say that Ishak was a teacher of Arabic rather than mathematics.

38 Carter V. Findley, "Foundation," 402-3.

39 Ishak was to become "Head Teacher" (Baqhoca) and thus virtual director of the Army Engineering School in 1830-31 (Unat, "Baahoca Ishak," 109).

40 In fact, it has to be admitted that the ratings of Ishak's linguistic proficiency vary. J. E. De Kay could hardly "decipher the teacher's barbarous Turko-Italian-French lingo" (Sketches of Turkey in 1831 and 1832, by an American, New York, 1833, 141). De Kay is, however, the only negative voice. Unat, "Bashoca Ishak, " passim, summarizes most of the published opinions, which may be supplemented with that of the British Ambassador, quoted in Findley "Foundation," 402. Mehmed Esad's account of Ishak's prowess (Mir)at, 37), even if not strictly veracious, implies that Ishak was a legend in his own time.

41 At least some of Ishak's works were in fact translations. See Mehmed Esad, Mir'at, 38 (saying that the four-volume mathematical work known as Mecmua-i Ulum-i Riyaziye was a translation from Latin) and 40-41. For Ishak's pioneering role in the development of modern scientific terminology in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic, see ibid., 40, and Lewis, Emergence, 86.

42 Both, especially Ishak, contributed to the spread of technical education among the Ottomans. Both, especially R, contributed to further the knowledge of Western languages among them. Both served at various times in diplomatic capacities, including that of "confidential medium" of communication between Ottoman officials and European diplomats (Unat, "Baahoca Ishak," 105, applies this phrase to Ishak; it will be applied repeatedly to R. below).

43 On Yahya Efendi, see Mehmed Esad, Mir'at, 33-34; Findley, "Foundation," 400-2; F. A. Tansel, "Ahmed Vefik Papa," Bell., XXVIII, 1964, 118.

44 Uzunqaraili, Merkez, 543-44, assuming that the references in this text to the "Tersane (Naval Arsenal) Instructorship" must refer to an instructorship in the Naval Engineering School.

45 This document cites laxity in the instruction of the students at the Naval School as a motive for Ruhuddin's transfer, which thus probably was contemporary with efforts at improvement made in the Army Engineering School following the destruction of the Janissaries (text, undated, in ibid., 541-46; on reform of Army School, see Mehmed Esad, Mir'at, 42).

46 NMM, 664, quoting a letter in French, described as having been written by Ahmed Vefik to Sir Patrick Colquhoun, c. 1879, in praise of R. and his works; Ahmed Vefik's contribution to the editing of R.'s dictionary of 1890 will be cited below.

47 Enver Ziya Karal, "Mehmed Namik Pa~aanln Hal Tercumesi, 1804-1892,"Tarih Vesikalari, II, 1942, 220.

48 Karal, "Mehmed Namik," 221. 49 NMM, 663; cf. comments on bureaucratic organization




of this period in n. 25 above. 50 Known increasingly with time as an opponent of

radical westernization, Namik Pasa remained in public service until almost the end of his long life. He died as Feyh

ul-vuzera, or senior vezir of the Empire, in September 1892, nine months after R.

51 H. Inalcik, art. "Husrev Pasa," Islam Ansiklopedisi, Istatibul, 1940- , V, 6 12-13.

52 On Husrev's pioneering role in this respect, see Mahmud Kemal Inal, OsmanlhDevrinde Son Sadriazamlar, Istanbul, 3d printing, 1964-65, I, 601-2; R.'s services in connection with a mission sent to England will be discussed below.

53 NMM, 663. 54 Balister, "A Great English Scholar in Turkey," 173;

what is meant by "language of Eastern Turkey" is unclear. There is no indication that R. traveled appreciably to the east.

55 It would be tempting to connect R.'s trip to Russia with the embassy of Halil Rifat Pasa, a protege of Husrev Pasa, sent to Russia in connection with the conclusion of this treaty, especially since Namik Pasa went along as attache militaire. But this was a temporary embassy, setting out in November 1829 and returning again a few months later (Ahmed Lfitfi, Tarih-i Latfi, Istanbul, 1290-1328 / 1873- 1910, II, 122, 129).

56 Findley, "Foundation," 403; Mehmed Esad, Mir'at,

35-36: Ishak was sent on a mission to the Balkans at this time.

57 FO 78 / 1240, R. to Herzlett [sic-Hertslet] 12 Nov. 1856; while this document itself is of later date, the incident referred to is the earliest item of indisputably autobio- graphical information thus far available. Answering a question about Serpent's Island in the Black Sea, R. provides exact dates for his trip to Russia: "I know that up to December 1830 the island was unoccupied, as I was then for several weeks beating about the neighborhood; I further believe that it was still a deserted island in Nov' 1833, when I again saw it ...

58 NMM, 663. 59 One may speculate that R.'s not remaining in Istanbul

had to do once again with Ishak Efendi, who had been appointed Ba~hoca at the Army Engineering School in 1830-31, but lost his post, thanks to the machinations of a rival, and was sent on a mission to the Hijaz in 1249 h., that year being more than half over before R. could have gotten back to Istanbul, if the date of Nov. 1833, mentioned in the quotation in n. 57 above, is accurate. Cf. Unat, "Bashoca Ishak," 109; Mehmed Esad, Mir'at, 39.

60 NMM, 663.

61 An event related to the diplomatic tensions following the Treaty of Hunkar Iskelesi (Findley, "Foundation,"

403-5). 62 The mission consisted of officers of the new army and

students from the military engineering schools of Istanbul, some of the latter being former students of Ishak Efendi and possibly already known to R. (Mehmed Esad, Mir'at, 39, 62-63).

63 R. described his role in this connection in the preface to the presentation manuscript of the Muntahabd t-i Turkiye, Ist. U. Lib., TY 2776 (unfoliated).

64 Some of the correspondence passing between the Ottoman and British authorities in connection with this mission is preserved in FO 78 / 297, beginning with documents of January 1836. R. is mentioned by name in a letter of 15 Apr. 1836 from Rear Admiral Sir F. L. Maitland, Superintendent of Portsmouth Dock Yard, to the Ottoman Ambassador, Nuri Efendi. A few details about the Turkish students are included in Brigadier 0. F. G. Hogg, The Royal Arsenal, Its Background, Origin, and Sub- sequent History, London, 1963, I, 654; more in Mehmed Esad, Mir'at, 64-66, and Ergin, Maarif Tarihi, II, 278-79.

65 NMM, 63. This statement is worthy of note as an added indication that the dictionary which R. prepared between 1830 and 1834 must have been an immature work.

66 In the preface to the presentation manuscript of the Muntahabdt-i Turkiye (Ist. U. Lib., TY 2776), R. said that he returned to Istanbul out of a desire to seek his livelihood in the service of the Ottoman Empire (saltanat-i seniyeden hisse-yab-i maivet olmak arzusunda olduguma binaen .... ). While this is possibly not a totally candid statement, the salaries mentioned for R. in some later Ottoman documents hint that he may have found himself better off economically in Istanbul and in Ottoman service.

67 NMM, 663. 68 Cyrus Hamlin, My Life and Times, Boston and

Chicago, 2d ed., 1893, 189. I am indebted to Professor Roderic H. Davison for this reference.

69 NMM, 664. The lexicographical work is the Muntahabdt, mentioned in earlier notes and published in 1842.

70 It may be noted, incidentally, that two likely inferences about R.'s activities in the middle and later 1830's- acquaintance with David Urquhart, and participation in the negotiations for the Anglo-Ottoman Commercial Treaty of 1838-lack documentary support. For information on Urquhart and the Urquhart Papers, I am indebted to Dr. Margaret Lamb of the University of Auckland, New Zealand (letter of 25 Nov. 1974) and to E. V. Quinn, Librarian of Balliol College, Oxford (letter of 20 May 1974). The inferences remain probable, however, particularly since Urquhart was in England for at least part of the time that R. was there and attempted to deal directly with Nuri Efendi in connection with the commercial treaty (Sir




Charles Webster, The Foreign Policy ofPalmerston, 1830- 1841: Britain, the Liberal Movement and the Eastern Question, New York, 1969, II, 550-5 1).

71 FO 78 / 1325, "MemQ of the services of Mr Redhouse in Turkey" by W. F. Williams, c. 18 Mar. 1857.

72 BBA, Anniyat Buyuruldu Defteri 776, entry of 15 C 1255/26 Aug. 1839, stating that his salary should be raised in view of this increase of responsibilities from 1750 kurus per month to 3000. Depending on the exchange rate at the time, such a salary, if regularly paid, might well have led R. to remain in Ottoman service. At c. 80-100 kurus to the pound sterling, a likely range for this period in Istanbul, this salary would have compared very favorably with those of most of the British Embassy dragomans (Allan Cunningham, "Dragomania," St. Antony's Papers, no. 11, 92 n.22). The school in which R. was to become a teacher has to be the Mekteb-i Ulum-i Edebiye, the only civil school opened in 1839 (Ergin, Maarif Tarihi, II, 324). The fact that it was opened in the mekteb of the Suleymaniye complex may point to a basis of factuality behind the otherwise unsubstantiated story that R. studied in the Sflleymaniye medrese (Robert Avery, Ink on Their Thumbs, The Antecedents of the Redhouse Press, Istanbul, 1970, 6).

73 NMM, 664. 74 Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna, Staatskanzlei,

Turkei VI / 70, Sturmer to Metternich, 19 Aug. 1839; the parenthetical comment appears in the original as "(et assez mauvais sujet d'ailleurs)." Meeting with Husrev in the same month, Sir Charles Napier also encountered R. as translator, but mentions him without evaluative comment (The War in Syria, London, 1842, I, 5).

75 NMM, 665. R. may have continued to be paid through the Foreign Ministry: BBA, Maliyeden Mudevver 11738, 20, entry of 21 S 1256 / 24 Apr. 1840, concerning salary payments for two foreigners on the staff of that ministry, mentions a "Mdsyd R...." The reading of the name is doubtful in the siyakat script, but it is very likely Red'avs instead of the more usually encountered Redhavs. The salary mentioned here is 2500 kurus per month. A passage in Moniteur ottoman, X, no. 152, 20 Mar. 1841, implies that R. was not appointed to the Naval Council until about that date.

76 FO 78 / 1325, Williams memo, c. 18 Mar. 1857. 77 See Bibliography. 78 R.'s involvment in naval affairs would by the time of

the expedition probably already have begun to signify involvement in Syrian affairs and in questions of Ottoman- Egyptian relations generally. There is no evidence explicitly connecting R. to such questions prior to his dispatch to Syria, but the mention of R. in a postscript to a letter of 17 Oct. 1839 from Ponsonby to Richard Wood-

the only such mention in the published letters of the latter- suggests a link between R. and what is discussed in the letter, namely, negotiations being conducted with two Druze shaykhs then in Istanbul (A. B. Cunningham, The Early Correspondence of Richard Wood, 1831-1841, Camden Fourth Series, III, London, 1966, 137-38; on the shaykhs, cf. ibid., 18). R. may also have participated in negotiations held with an Egyptian representative in Istanbul in the summer of 1840 over matters such as the return of the fleet. See Edouard Driault led.], L'Egypte et l'Europe, La crise orientate de 1839-1841, III,L 'Egypte et la France contre l'Europe (juillet-octobre 1840), Rome, 1931, passim. The representative in question was Sami Bey, later known as Abdurrahman Sami Pasa. R. may thus have met Sami as early as 1840, definitely knew him after Sami's shift to service of the Istanbul government (c. 1849), and later claimed to have known him well (SRO, GD261 / 26, R. to Sir Charles A Murray, 31 July 1879), cf. n. 104.

79 FO 78 / 1325. Williams memo, c. 18 Mar. 1857. 80 I have not been able to find any mention of R.'s

activities in Syria in either Cunningham, Correspondence of R. Wood, Napier, War in Syria, or August von Jochmus, Der Syrische Krieg und der Verfall des Osmanen-Reiches seit 1840, Frankfurt am Main, 1856. I have not been able to examine Jochmus, The Syrian War and the Decline of the Ottoman Empire, Berlin, 1883, 2 vol., which must, to judge from the number of volumes, be more than a translation of the earlier work.

81 FO 78 / 396, Ponsonby to Palmerston, 17 Sept. 1840. 82 FO 78 / 397, Ponsonby to Palmerston, 7 Oct. 1840;

cf. Great Britain, Accounts and Papers, 1841, XXIX, pt. ii (Cmd. 323), 330, where R.'s name is edited out of the covering dispatch.

83 Cunningham, Correspondence of R. Wood, 180, Wood to Ponsonby, 4 Nov. 1840.

84 Harold Temperley, England and the Near East: The Crimea, London, 1936, 493-94.

85 NMM, 665. 86 Resat Kaynar, Mustafa Refit Pasa ve Tanzimat,

Ankara, 1954, 354, where the name Ruhavz is clearly a misreading for Redhouse as ordinarily written in Arabic script. This mention appears in a document of c. end Dec. 1840, referring to the assignment of R. and others to accompany Walker (here designated as Yaver Pasa) on a mission to settle this and other matters still outstanding with Muhammad Ali. Cunningham, Correspondence of R. Wood, 206, Wood to Ponsonby, 18 Jan. 1841, attests that Walker did go to Alexandria to bring back the fleet.

87 BBA, Irade H354, dated 1256 / 1840 in the catalogue, recommending R. for this honor, which is mentioned also in the published biographical accounts.




88 BBA, Cev. Har. 6367, a document bearing various dates between Z 1257 and M 1258 / Dec. 1841-Jan. 1842, shows his salary as 3,000 kuruF and thus ranks him, along with the Translator of the Imperial Divan, the First Translator (deputy director of the Office), and an instructor named Serafin (?), as one of the four highest-paid officials then in the office. This document does not state that R. was an instructor. My statement to that effect and my dating of the document to 27 M 1257 / 1841 (in "Foundation," 404, n. 2) require correction.

89 NMM, 665. 90 Ist. U. Lib., TY 2776, with the variant title

Muntahabdt-i Turkiye; cf. NMM, 665. 91 FO 352 / 27, pt. ii, Stratford to Williams, 13 Jan.

1843. Cf. FO 78 / 1325, Williams memo. of c. 18 Mar. 1857 and biographical data on Williams in DNB.

92 Curzon was assigned to the mission when a sudden illness raised doubts about Williams' ability to make the journey (FO 78 / 515, Stratford's instructions to R. Curzon, 26 Jan. 1843).

93 NMM, 665. 94 Robert Curzon (Baron Zouche), Armenia: A Year at

Erzeroom, and on the Frontiers of Russia, Turkey, and Persia, London, 1854, 77-82, mentioning "the dragoman" on 81.

95 For example, see FO 195 / 223 A&B (c. Nov.-Dec. 1843).

96 NMM, 666; FO 78 / 1325, Williams memo of c. 18 Mar. 1857.

97 NMM, 666; the fact that the Kavaid was only published in 1851 (cf. Jean Deny, Grammaire de la langue turque (dialect osmanli), Paris, 1921, xxviii) suggests either that R. knew of this work well before its publication or else that he did no more than begin his comparable project while at Erzurum. Years later, R. wrote that "Fu'ad's [sic] stupid Turkish Grammar, based on the French Grammaire de Shomond [doubtful reading-

Jaubert?] made me write my 'Grammaire Raisonnee'" (SRO, GD261 / 26, R. to Sir Charles Murray, 31 July 1879). Lewis (Emergence, 346) says that the Kavaid was based on the French translation of A. L. Davids' Grammar of the Turkish Language (London, 1836).

98 FO 195 / 298, Williams to Cowley, Erzurum, 31 May 1847.

99 FO 78 / 689, Cowley to Palmerston, 1 Dec. 1847. 100 FO 195 / 308, receipt signed J. W. Redhouse, dated

Constantinople, 30 Jan. 1849. 101 FO 78 / 733, personal letter of Stratford to

Palmerston, Vienna, 30 Apr. 1848, enclosing letter of R., Const., 3 Apr. 1848; FO 78 / 734, Stratford to Palmerston, 18 Aug. 1848.

102 It may be that the Shah of Iran similarly discounted

R's services. The published biographical accounts agree that the shah conferred on R. the Order of the Lion and Sun. A contemporary letter from the British charge in Tehran says, however, that only the British Commissioner, Williams, received the Order of the Lion and Sun, "without the cordon," while R. was awarded-" a shawl" (FO 195 / 298, J. Sheil to W. F. Williams, 22 Feb. 1847). Perhaps the Persians were subsequently persuaded to do better.

103 FO 78 / 734, Stratford to Palmerston, 19 Aug. 1848, relating that Mustafa Resid Pasa, then Grand Vezir, had accepted his suggestion of having R. translate all communications "respecting matters of internal improvement" for the "perusal and consideration of the Turkish Ministers."

104 R.'s membership is mentioned in various sources: e.g., F.O. List, 1892, 179; Lewis, Emergence, 437. Curiously, it is omitted from most of the published biographies. The Academy is discussed in Serif Mardin, Gensis of Young Ottoman Thought, Princeton, 1962, 226- 27, and more fully in Ahmed Hamdi Tanpinar, XIX. Asir Turk Ediebiyati Tarihi, Istanbul, 1967, 113-15, R. being mentioned on 113. The other members mentioned by Tanpinar give some idea of the presumable extent of R.'s literary acquaintanceship as of his last years in Istanbul. The list includes Abdurrahman Sami Pasa (cf. n. 78), whose household was noted as a meeting place of Ottoman litterateurs and European orientalists (biography in Mahmud Kemal Inal, Son Asir Turk $airleri, Istanbul, 1930-40, III, 1619-30; on the household, see Mardin, Genesis, 12-13, 19 n. 16, where Andreas Mordtmann is said to have served as a tutor there).

105 NMM, 666; a catalogue of this library as it existed at some point in the nineteenth century is preserved in Har., Nizamat ve Kavanin, karton 70, sira 46.

106 FO 78 / 1325, Williams memo, c. 18 Mar. 1857. 107 As late as 1890, the F. 0. Lists included R. with this

title in the listing of individuals on active service. The implication in Bowen, British Contributions, 55, that Charles Wells would have succeeded to the post prior to that date is thus inaccurate. The nature of R.'s services is to be inferred from occasional communications between him and the Foreign Office: e.g., FO 78 / 1052, correspondence of 15-29 May 1854 on a dictionary being published by Major Boyd (on whom see Bowen, British Contributions, 44): FO 78 / 1240, R. to Herzlett [sic.], 12 Nov. 1856, R's recollections from 1830-33 about Serpent's Island (cf. n. 57); FO 78/ 1324, R. to Hammond, 16 (?) Jan. 1856, returning some documents with translations.

108 FO 78 / 1325, Williams memo of c. 18 Mar. 1857; unsigned note on back, inferred to be by Clarendon. The part about taking R.'s works refers not only to the grammar




of 1846 but also, as will be seen below, to the Dictionary of 1856.

109 JRAS, XIX, 1862, xxviii; XX, 1863, xxv, "Annual

Reports." 110 Har., TKE 763, "Umur-i Hariciye Defter-i Masarifat-i

Umumiyesi, sene 1276," indicating the same pension for 1275 and 1276, these two financial years corresponding to

1859-60 and 1860-61. 1l Aside from his later requests to the Ottoman

authorities for an increase in his pension (to be discussed

below), R. also complained on occasion "I have never had

the cash needed by a collector of books. What I have seen

have been in the possession of friends ...." (SRO,

GD261 / 26, R. to Sir Charles Murray, 31 July 1879). 112 NMM, 666. 113 The Turkish Campaigner's Vade-Mecum of Ottoman

Colloquial Language, London, 1855, iv. 114 William G. Schauffler, Autobiography of William G.

Schauffler, for Forty-Nine Years a Missionary in the

Orient, edited by his sons, New York, 1887, 224; cf.

Redhouse,A Lexicon, English and Turkish, 1861, i. 115 Schauffler, Autobigraphy, 218; on the earlier trans-

lation, see Charles T. Riggs, "The Turkish Translations of

the Bible," Moslem World, XXX, 1940, 238-40. 116 Schauffler (Autobiography, 219-20) in Istanbul was

appointed to check R.' s work against the Greek. This

episode is of interest as the only recorded case, not counting his later attempts at verse translation, where anyone was

dissatisfied with R.'s work as a translator. While the

objections are understandable as concerns the demand that

the translator know Greek and Hebrew, they are otherwise difficult to assess, since the version which the missionaries in Istanbul preferred to R.'s was the Armeno-Turkish translation of William Goodell. According to Schauffler (ibid., 220), Turks to whom both versions were read

preferred the latter. In fact the work of Bible translation was to continue until the turn of the century before an Ottoman Turkish version satisfactory to the missionaries would be produced (Riggs, "Turkish Translations," 242-46).

117 Hamlin, Life and Times, 379 ff.; Schauffler, Autobiography, 224-25; FO 78 / 1241, Schaufflerto Sir C.

Eardley, 10 Dec. 1856; Eardley to Clarendon (?), 22 Dec. 1856; Eardley to Edmund Hammond, 30 Dec. 1856.

118 FO 78 / 1241, unsigned minute on back of Eardly to

Clarendon (?), 22 Dec. 1856: "I doubt much the use of teaching the Turks English: what might be of service, and what I thought was contemplated, was to translate English works into Turkish, and circulate the translations and so inspire their minds."

119 Ibid.; Schauffler,Autobiography, 224. 120 Schauffler (Autobigraphy, 231-32) recounts the

critical meetings with Wheelwright and lists the various

books published in the series, including a "Turkish

Grammar, by which to acquire the English Language," which he wrote. For R.'s contributions, see entries for

1858-61 in Bibliography, below. 121 Business arrangements discussed in ABCFM, vol. 6,

no. 227, Edwin E. Bliss to N. G. Clark, 8 Nov. 1879; cf. the

Lexicon of 1890, ii-iii. Problems with censors mentioned in

SRO, GD261 / 56, R. to Murray, 21 Sept. 1889. 122 Avery, Ink on Their Thumbs, 6-7: the continued

success of R.'s works, including by then the Redhouse

English-Turkish Dictionary of 1950, really a new work by other scholars, in 1960 inspired the renaming of the

Publication Department of the American Board in Istanbul

as the Redhouse Press. 123 Proper evaluation of the non-lexicographical works is

a task that cannot be undertaken here. Readily available

samples of the criticisms include Nicholson's opinion of the

verse translation of Rumi's Mesnevi (see R. A. Nicholson,

ed. and trans., The Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi, Gibb Memorial New Series, London, 1926, II, xiv) and E. G.

Browne's prefaces to successive volumes of R.'s post- humously published edition of The Pearl-Strings .. . of al-

Khazraji. Starting in 1906 on a tone of veneration (ibid., I, xxi-xxvii), these shift by the time the last volume came out

(1918) to disillusionment with R.'s handling of the MS. and with the work itself as being of slight value, not to mention other disappointments that had arisen in the process of publication (ibid., V, ix-x). The criticisms made by Daud Rahbar (God of Justice, A Study in the Ethical Doctrine of the Qur)cn, Leiden, 1960, 12-15, 33) about R.'s "On' The Most Comely Names,'" may also be cited. Professor Michael Zwettler of Ohio State University kindly brought this last reference to my attention.

124 Cf. R.'s two works of 1877 and 1880 on the "false dawn" (subh-i kazib) or "zodiacal light." In later years, R.'s technical interests seem to have extended to include anthropology and evolutionary theory as well. This is indicated by his "Theory of the Chief Races of Europe and Asia" (see Bibliography under "Incompletely Identified Works") and by the "Arabian Matriarchate" controversy (Bibliography, entries for 1884-86). The Darwinian note is sounded clearly in the Notes on Professor E. B. Tylor's Arabian Matriarchate: " ...before and during the great glacial period..., when man was slowly or rapidly differentiating from the brutes ...." (p. 19 in the pamphlet version of 1884). The Tentative Chronological Synopsis of the History of Arabia and its Neighbours from B. C. 500,000 (?) to A.D. 679 (1887) must reflect further speculation in the same vein.

125 This would appear true, for example, of his pamphlet of 1877 on Vindication of the Ottoman Sultan's Title of Caliph. R. clearly alleged indifference to criticism in




commenting on his translation of Rumi's Mesnevi. Writing to Sir Charles Murray on 30 June 1880, he stated: "My very best thanks are due to you, and gratefully given, for the kindness of thought that has prompted your suggestion of my abandoning the publication of my metrical version of the

First Book of the Mesnev. .... I have no reputation to lose as a versificator; so that criticism can hardly assail me after my disclaimer." (SRO, GD261 / 26). After the volume came out, R. became somewhat defensive but maintained his nonchalance: "You perhaps may have seen two notices of it; one in the Saturday Review, the other in the Glasgow Herald. Both are kind to me personally; but both are of opinion that the translation should have been in prose. To a Scholar a prose translation may have a certain value; but my feeling was and is that prose translations of beautiful poetry are a desecration.... Greater talent could doubtless have done much better. With more time, I could have remedied a few of the more glaring defects. Lacking this, I deemed the work sufficiently clear to give the author's spirit; and this alone is what I wished the English public to judge of" (Camb. U. Lib. MSS., Add 6377 [180], R. to E. B. Cowell, 9 May 1881).

126 R. stated the matter in exaggerated form to Musurus Papa, Ottoman ambassador in London (Har., Idare, 198 letter of 16 Mar. 1869): "Toutes les grandes nations ont des dictionnaires ottomans et le Lehdjetu-9l-lugat [of Mehmed Esad; cf. PTF, 237] qui donne l'arabe et le persan d'un certain nombre de mots turcs, ne l'est pas non plus."

127 Har., TKE 1457, letter of R. to Fuad Papa, 18 July 1867 and 10 Dec. 1867. R. estimated that printing the work would occupy a printer for about twelve years at a maximum cost of about 50 pounds sterling a month.

128 Har., Idare 198, R. to Musurus Papa, 10 Mar. 1869; Musurus to Ali, 11 Mar. 1869; Ali to Musurus, 4 Aug. 1869.

129 NMM, 667, speaks of the work as still in progress; Charles Rieu, Catalogue of the Turkish Manuscripts in the British Museum, London, 1888, 148, an abridged version of R.'s preface to BM Or. MS. 2959, "Fifteen Chapters and Part Chapters . . . of a Thesaurus Dictionary .... ," I, fol. 4a, where R. refers to the number of volumes at one point as nine, at another as ten.

130 Rieu, Catalogue, 147-48; BM Or. MS. 2959, I, fol. 3a-4b.

131 NMM, 667. 132 Camb. U. Lib. MSS., Add. 6377 (180), R. to Cowell,

9 May 1881. 133 Rieu, Catalogue, 148. 134 SRO, GD261 / 56, R. to Murray, 20 Aug. 1889 . . . just now my eyesight is the chief trouble with me; and

as I am studying Armenian, it is a very trying spoke in my wheel.") and 21 Sept. 1889 (reference to study of

Armenian and Russian and again to trouble with eyesight). 135 ABCFM, vol. 21, no. 128, Henry 0. Dwight to

Judson Smith, 5 Mar. 1891; Ahmed Vefik aided Dwight in revising, editing and proofreading; the proofs were also read by R., Dwight, and two other members of the missionary staff.

136 Browne at that point aspired to become a scholar of Turkish himself; see A. J. Arberry, Oriental Essays, Portraits of Seven Scholars, London, 1960m 163, On E. J. W. Gibb, see Redhouse, Pearl-Strings, I, xxii-xxv.

137 DNB Supplement, II, art. "Colquhoun, Sir Patrick

MacChombaich." Sir Patrick was one of the men who paid for the presentation manuscript of R.'s Muntahabdt (NMM, 665).

138 I am indebted for my information about Sir Patrick's estate to R. S. Colquhoun, Esq., of London, who kindly examined the will (personal letter of 24 July 1974).

139 Will of Eliza Colquhoun Redhouse, dated 4 January 1923 and probated 30 October 1923, as recorded in the Principal Registry of the Family Division of the High Court of Justice, Somerset House, London. Lady R. died on 23 July 1923; in 1914, she married Colonel George Philips, who died in 1918 (London Times, 24 July 1923, 15d). The scholarship still exists (letter of R. F. Salisbury, Clerk of Christ's Hospital, 28 Feb. 1975).

140 R. appears to have done this in the case of each such work, from the Muntahabdt (Ist. U. Lib., TY 2776; 18,230 Arabic words, 6,420 Persian words, 24,650 in all according to the preface) to the Lexicon of 1890 (about 93,000 according to its preface, p. iii).

141 SRO, GD261 / 26, R. to Sir Charles Murray, 26 June 1880: "There are 4111 couplets."

142 R. catalogued 552 and believed there were as many as a thousand ("On 'The Most Comely Names,' " JRAS, XII n.s., 1880, 69). Cf. Rahbar, God of Justice, 12-15.

143 The prefaces to his dictionaries are excellent examples of this; so are his letters, although the fact that so few are available and that most of them were written to individuals of superior social status (Layard, Murray) may make it unwise to generalize about them in this regard.

144 Camb. U. Lib. MSS. Add 4251 (1164), letter of R. to E. J. W. Gibb, 23 Oct. 1885, reprinted and discussed by E. G. Browne in his "Editor's Preface" to Redhouse, Pearl- Strings, I, xxiii-xxv. In the letter, R. also mentions enclosure of the same souvenirs for transmission to W. A. Clouston, editor of Arabian Poetry for English Readers (see entry in Bibliography, below, for 1881) and, as Browne points out (p. xxv), refers no less than three times to his desire to be remembered by his works.

145 BM, Add. MS 39012, Layard Papers, LXXXII, R. to Layard, 18 Apr. 1877, fol. 76a-78a, denouncing Gladstone as "the surrenderer of Corfu, the would-be




surrenderer of Gilbralter," proposing a "general European confederacy" against Russia "as of yore against Bonaparte's tyranny," calling for creation of a protective barrier in the form of a resurrected Polish Empire under Hapsburg rule, etc.

146 "The remote ancestors of the Turks were, possibly, not only the first nation that worked iron, steel, and all metals; but were also, perhaps, the very inventors of writing, or its introducers into the west of Asia. The oldest cuneiform inscriptions are in a Turanian language, the science contained in which it was so highly valued by the neighbouring monarchs as to be translated at their command into the primitive Semitic, at a date when the Greeks were still unlettered barbarians" (On the History, System, and Varieties of Turkish Poetry..., London, 1879, 17).

147 He said this kind of thing several times about his translation of the Mesnevi; for example, "I want to show Europe what Muslim Asia has done in the way of thought" (SRO, GD261/26, R. to Murray, 17 June 1880).

148 A Lexicon, English and Turkish, London, 1861, ii. 149 SRO, GD261/26, R. to Murray, 31 July 1879,

commenting on his motives in writing On the History ... of Turkish Poetry. R. defends the cosmopolitan character of the Ottoman language in the same letter; cf. On the History ... of Turkish Poetry, 16, 22-23.

150 Into the same work on Ottoman poetry, R. injected a defense of Islam against the allegation that it denied the immortality of the soul to women (ibid., 6ff.). This was in response to a statement made by N. G. Clark, D. D., Foreign Secretary of the American Board of Commis- sioners for Foreign Missions, in a paper read at a meeting of that organization in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on 2 Oct. 1878 and subsequently published (ibid., 6, n. 2). R. brought his response to the attention of Edwin E. Bliss in Istanbul, who in turn informed Clark of it (ABCFM, vol. 6, no. 222, Bliss to Clark, 25 Apr. 1879). The incident is of special interest as one of several signs that Redhouse was not close to the missionaries in any profound sense, despite their "business relationship." R.'s later "scientific" views also tend to support this impression (cf. n. 124).

151 BM, Add. MS 39101, Layard Papers, CLXXI, R. to Layard, 23 Aug. 1861, fol. 12a-b: "Hitherto, the young men sent out to study have been poor and of no weight on their return. By the time they rise to anything like a commanding rank in the public service, they forget the most vivifying part of what they learnt, and are occupied in taking care of their own interests and advancement. Young men of family from the provinces could effect many improvements of their own free will, and they would also be fitted to comprehend the views of the government and to explain them to their neighbours. Sons of the higher 'ulema would

also be very useful in the same way and by the same means .. and they should travel by hundreds and even thousands .... Frequent intercourse is the greatest softener and civiliser."

152 SRO, GD261/26, R. to Murray, 31 July 1879. R. expressed a similar spirit in the preface to the English and Turkish Dictionary of 1856, ii.

153 Redhouse, Pearl-Strings, I, xxii (in Browne's "Editor's Preface"); cf. comments in JRAS, XVIII n.s., 1886, cxxiv-cxxvi, in "Proceedings of the Sixty-Third Anniversary Meeting of the Society."

154 Har. TKE 1457, R. to Fuad Pasa, 10 Dec. 1867: "mon premier ouvrage du meme genre, le Muntakhabit, qui a recemment requ l'honneur d'une re-impression [sic] aux frais du Gouvernement pour Wtre adopte dans les ecoles et dans les colleges de l'Empire"; statement to same effect also in Har., Idare 198, R. to Musurus Pasa, 16 Mar. 1869.

155 The Grammaire raisonnee evidently was, as Bowen implies (British Contributions, 46), the first Turkish grammar by a British author to give a clear description of vowel harmony, though R. (Gram. rais., 29) was naive in thinking it might be unique to Ottoman. R. was not, however, absolutely the first grammarian of Ottoman to describe vowel harmony or at least display a pragmatic understanding of it in his paradigms. See for example M. Viguier, Elements de la langue turque ou tables analy- tiques de la langue turque usuelle, avec leurdveloppement, Constantinople, 1790; Cosimo Comidas de Carbognano, Primi principi della grammatica turca, Rome, 1794; and Demetrios Alexandridis, Grammatike graikiko-tourkike, Vienna, 1812. The fact that such a basic characteristic of the language was not uniformly recognized in the grammars may have to do with the fact that the vowel harmony of Ottoman Turkish was still changing. Other works more or less contemporary with the Gram. rais. which either evince no understanding of vowel harmony or, at best, a partial or inconsistent pragmatic understanding (at least as compared with R.) include Arthur Lumley Davids, Grammar of the Turkish Language, London, 1832; and Amedee Jaubert, Elements de la grammaire turke, a l'usage des eleves de l'Ecole royale et speciale des langues orientales vivantes, Paris, 1833. R. was critical in the preface of the Gram. rais. of the grammarians who had gone before him, mentioning only Viguier by name and with no more than partial approval. The historical development of vowel harmony in the Turkic languages, as of its treatment by grammarians, has evidently not yet been studied in any detail. For an example of the available commentary, see PTF, 190-91. For guidance in dealing with this difficult problem, I am indebted to Professors Gustav Bayerle of Indiana University, Robert Dankoff of Brandeis University, James Kelly of the University of Utah, Victor Menage of London University,




and particularly to Professor Andreas Tietze of the University of Vienna, who provided most of the biblio- graphical citations in this note.

56 NMM, 667. 57 PTF, 229.

158 In the prefaces to both the Muntahabdat (Ist. U. Lib., TY 2776) and the Gram. rais., i, R. alluded to wishing to make the way easier for other students than it had been for himself or his predecessors. In introducing the English and Turkish Dictionary of 1856, he apologized for the small scope of the work, but added: "as ther does not exist in English any similar work, it has been judged that a book which shall contain the more usual terms of the two languages, and explain the more striking modifications of their meanings-which shall give, not only the orthography of the Turkish words (whether of Arabic, Persian, or Turkish origin), but also their correct pronunciation and accentuation-two things never achieved, and the latter never attempted, even in the best dictionaries published on the Continent-could not fail of being acceptable .... For the materials of this book [the author] is indebted to no one, even of the continental authors, unless in so far as he used two dictionaries to arrive without loss of time at the alphabetical arrangement and selection of the words ...."

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF REDHOUSE'S WORKS

The following is a chronological listing of Redhouse's known "works," that term being broadly interpreted. Of course, no attempt is or can be made to include the bulk of his official work. Items which I have not been able to examine myself are marked with an asterisk, the source of the information given below being indicated. No attempt is made at an exhaustive listing of reprintings, as opposed to distinct editions. Ellipsis indicates omission of items included in Arabic script in English titles but is not used for works where the title page bears what amount to titles in both English and Turkish, the Turkish then being given as well.

1826-28: *Translation into Ottoman of an English version of the Travels of Ibn Battuta, carried out jointly by Redhouse and Namik Papa (NMM, etc.).

1834: *Turkish-English-French Dictionary; ms. supposedly completed by this date; never published; disposition of ms. unknown (DNB, NMM, etc.).

1838: *Norie, Epitome of Navigation, translated into Ottoman and published soon after in Istanbul (NMM), evidently by the press of the Naval Engineering School, under the title Seyr-i Sefain Hulasasi (Balister, " A Great English Scholar in Turkey," 173).

*Southey, Life of Nelson, translated into Turkish (NMM).

1840: "French Code of Forest Laws," translated into Turkish, BM Or. Ms. 365 1.

"Regulations of the Royal Navy," translated into Turkish, BM Or. Ms. 3650.

1842: Muntahabdt-i Lagat-i Osmaniye, dictionary (written in Ottoman Turkish) of Arabic and Persian words in common use in Turkish. Calligraphic manuscript presented under title Muntahabdt-i Turkiye to Sultan (Ist. U. Lib., TY 2776); holograph ms. presented to Library of Prince Consort, London (NMM). Published in Istanbul anonymously in 1269 / 1852-53, 2 vol., and reprinted many times. Fethi Edhem Karatay, Istanbul Universitesi Kutuphanesi Turkqe Basmalar Alfabe

Katalotqu (cited below as Karatay), Istanbul, 1956, I, 561, mentions reprintings of 1280 /1863-64, 1281 / 1864-65, 1282 / 1865-66, 1285 / 1868-69, 1286 / 1869-70. Cf. the enlarged (ilaveli) and no longer anonymous edition mentioned for 1872-73.

1846: Grammaire raisonnee de la langue ottomane, Paris, 80.

c. 1847: *"On the Progress of Russia in the East," translation into Turkish of a pamphlet by "a retired British Diplomatist" (NMM).

1855: *Evangelo di San Matteo (Italian and Ottoman), 80

(BMC).

The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (El-Incil (ala

rivayeti Metad il- (Aziz ), 8?.

The Turkish Campaigner's Vade-Mecum of Ottoman Colloquial Language; containing: A concise Ottoman Grammar; a carefully selected Vocabulary, alpha- betically arranged, in Two Parts-English and Turkish, and Turkish and English; also a Few Familiar Dialogues; the Whole in English Characters. London, 160; second edition, 1877; fourth edition, 1909 (date of third unknown; BMC).

1856;*[William Paley], Paley's Evidences of Christianity, in Turkish. Published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; London, 120 (OWSA).

1856-5 7: An English and Turkish Dictionary, in Two Parts, English and Turkish, and Turkish and English, London, 80.

1857: *Improved Version of the New Testament, in Turkish. Published by the British and Foreign Bible Society, London (OWSA).




1858: *English Primer in Turkish, London, 120. (OWSA).

1859: *Dialogues in English and Turkish. By Mahmud Efendi (edited by Redhouse), London, 160. (OWSA).

1861: A Lexicon, English and Turkish, shewing, in Turkish, the Literal, Incidental, Figurative, Colloquial, and Technical Significations of the English Terms; indicating their Pronunciation in a New and Systematic Manner; and preceded by a Sketch of English Etymology, to Facilitate to Turkish Students the Acquisition of the English Language (Kitab Lehcetu '1- Maani), London, 8?.; second ed., Constantinople, 1877. Deny (PTF, 229) treats this as an enlargement of the Dictionary of 1856-57 and seems to confuse the later editions and reprintings of the two works.

"A Turkish Circle Ode, by Shahin-Ghiray, Khan of the Crimea. With Translation, Memoir of the Author, and a brief Account of the Khanate of the Crimea, its Connexion with Turkey, and its Annexation by Catherine the Second of Russia," JRAS, XVIII, 400- 15.

1862: "Translation from the Original Arabic of an Account of many Expeditions conducted by the Sultan of Burnu, Idris the Pilgrim, son of )Ali [sic], against various Tribes, his Neighbours, other than the Bulala, &c., inhabitants of the land of Kanim," JRAS, XIX, 199-25 9.

1862-63: "Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth [Fortieth] Anniversary Meeting of the Society . . . ," JRAS, XIX, i-xxvii; XX, i-xxiv, presumably all or partly by R. as Secretary. No "Proceedings" published in 1861 (JRAS, XVIII)? Reinhold Rost had succeeded as Secretary by the time the "Proceedings" for 1864 appeared (JRAS, I n.s., xviii).

1872-73: *Ilaveli Muntahabdt-i Lagat-i Osmaniye, Istanbul, 1289 / 1872-73, 2 vol. in one, described by Karatay (II, 647) as "printed from Redhouse's manuscript dictionary" (the presentation ms. of 1842?) and presumably no longer anonymous in view of the listing under R.'s name; cf. Deny's speculations about the authorship of the work in PTF, 235. Karatay and Deny mention reprintings in 1303 / 1885-86, 1315 / 1897-98, and 1318 / 1900-1.

1874: The Diary of H.M. the Shah of Persia during his Tour through Europe in A.D. 1873, London, 8?.

1877: *A Vindication of the Ottoman Sultan's Title of "Caliph," shewing its Antiquity, Validity, etc., London, 8?. (BMC).

A Lexicon, English and Turkish .. ., Constantinople, 40. Second edition of Lexicon of 1861; later reprintings down to 1922.

The Turkish Vade-Mecum..., London, 160., second edition.

1878: "On the Natural Phenomenon known in the East by the names Sub-hi- Kazib [sic], etc., etc.,"JRAS, X n.s., 344-54.

1879: On the History, System, and Varieties of Turkish Poetry. Illustrated by Selections in the Original, and in English Paraphrase, with a Notice of the Islamic Doctrine of the Immortality of Woman's Soul in the Future State, London, 1879, reprinted from the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, XII, paper read before that society on 12 Feb. 1879.

1880: "Identification of the 'False Dawn' of the Muslims with the 'Zodiacal Light' of Europeans,"JRAS, XII n.s., 327-34.

"On 'The Most Comely Names,'. .., i.e., The Laudatory Epithets, or The Titles of Praise, bestowed on God in the Qur)fn or by Muslim Writers," JRAS, XII n.s., 1-69.

Redhouse's Turkish Dictionary, in two parts, 2d ed., rev. and enlarged by Charles Wells, London, 8?; based on the English and Turkish Dictionary of 1856.

1881: "Kacb's Poem of the Mantle," "El-Busiri's Poem of the Mantle," "Notes on Kab's Mantle Poem," "Notes on El-Bfisiri's Mantle Poem," and "The L Poem of the Foreigner (Lrmiyyatu-9l-(Ajam, by Et-TugrAC)", in W. A. clouston, ed., Arabian Poetry for English Readers, Glasgow, privately printed, 1881, 305-41, 459-72.

"The L-Poem of the Arabs..., by ShanfarA.... Rearranged and translated by J. W. Redhouse," JRAS, XIII n.s., 437-67.

*[Enderuni Osman Vasif, d. 1240 / 1824-25] A Mother's Advice to her Daughter and the wild Daughter's Undutiful Reply: Two Humorous Turkish Poems, in the Harem Dialect Women, and in Pentastich Strophes, with Recurrent Chorus. by Wasifi Enderrini. Metrically translated into English, privately and anonymously published (cf. E. J. W. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, London, 1905, IV, 279-85, 289-304; Bowen, British Contributions to Turkish Studies, 46-47).

The Mesnev! (Usually Known as the Mesneviyi Sherif, or Holy Mesnev!) of Mevlana Jeldlu-)d-Din, Muham- med, Er-Rrim!. Book the First. Together with Some




Account of the Life and Acts of the Author, of his Ancestors, and of his Descendants; Illustrated by a Selection of Characteristic Anecdotes, as Collected by their Historian, Mevland Shemsu-Vd-Din Ahmed, el- Eflaki, El-(Arifi, London, 8?.

1883: *"On the Age of Joseph when Sold into Egypt," London, printed for private circulation, 8K., 24 pp.

(BMC).

"The Era of Abraham, from his Birth to the Death of Joseph in Egypt," privately printed, London, 4?., a one- page chronological chart base on the Book of Genesis.

1884: Notes on Prof E. B. Tylor's 'Arabian Matriarchate,' Propounded by Him as President of the Anthro- pological Section, British Association, Montreal, 1884, London, 8?., pamphlet of 20 pp.

A Simplified Grammar of the Ottoman-Turkish Lan- guage. London, 8?.

c. 1885: *Kulliydt-i Aziziye fil )l-Lagati 'l-Osmaniye, unfinished ms. dictionary, entirely in Ottoman Turkish, 9 or 10 volumes completed over a period of years and presented gradually to the Ottoman government, up to about this date; disposition of ms. unknown.

1885: "Fifteen Chapters and Part-Chapters . . . of a Thesaurus Dictionary of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish (Ottoman and Eastern), explained in English," ms., 10 large folio volumes, completed over a period of about twenty years and presented to the British Museum (BM Or. Ms. 2959).

"Notes on Prof. Tylor's 'Arabian Matriarchate' propounded by him, as President of the Anthropological Section, British Association, Montreal, 1884," JRAS, XVII n.s., 275-92; evidently identical to the pamphlet of 1884.

1886: *Correspondence between R. and Tylor on the "Arabian Matriarchate" controversy, published in The Academy, letters by R. dated 4 July and 22 August. Referred to in JRAS, XVIII n.s., xcvi-xcvii ("Pro- ceedings of the Sixty-Third Anniversary Meeting of the Society").

"Observations on the various Texts and Translations of the so-called 'Song of Meysfin'; an Inquiry into Meysun's claim to its Authorship; and an Appendix on Arabic Transliteration and Pronunciation,"JRAS, XVIII n.s., 268-322.

1887: "The Persian for Rouble" and "The 'Farhang Jahangiri,' " two letters to JRAS, XIX n.s., 161-63.

*A Tentative Chronological Synopsis of the History of Arabia and its Neighbours, from B.C. 500,000 (?) to A.D. 679, London, l6pp. (mentioned in Redhouse, Pearl-Strings, III, n.p., "Editor's Preface" by E. G. Browne).

"Were Zenobia and ZebbA'u Identical?", JRAS, XIX n.s., 583-97.

1890: "Modern Name of 'Ur of the Chaldees,' " letter to JRAS, XXII n.s., 822-97.

A Turkish and English Lexicon, shewing in English the Significations of the Turkish Terms (Kitab Maani-i Lehee), Constaninople, 4?. Many reprintings in Istanbul down to 1923; original ms. preserved at Redhouse Press, Istanbul. Reprinted in 1973 in Beirut by Librairie du Liban, also in 1974 in Mystic, Connecticut, by L. Verry, Inc.

1906-18: The Pearl-Strings; A History of the Restliyy Dynasty of Yemen by (Aliyyu)bnu)l-HIasan )El- Khazrejiyy, with Translation, Introduction, Annotations, Index, Tables, and Maps, by the late Sir J. W. Redhouse..., edited by E. G. Browne, R. A. Nicholson, and A. Rogers. 5 vol., E. J. W. Gibb Memorial, Leyden and London.

1909: *The Turkish Vade-Mecum ..., 4th ed., London, 320.

Incompletely Identified Works (dating from before 1880; mentioned in NMM).

*Mirza Baqir, "Critical Essay on the Chronolagical Order of the Chapters of the Qur'an," translation.

*"Passages in the Canon Law of Isla Relating to Slavery," translated from Arabic for the Duke of Somerset's Parliamentary Commission on the Slave Trade.

*"A Theory of the Chief Races of Europe and Asia," read before the Royal Society of Literature.

*"Women's Legal Status in Islam."

Later Dictionaries Bearing Redhouse's Name

1950: Yeni Redhouse Lagati, Ingilizce-Turkqe, Istanbul, 8?; a new dictionary prepared by J. K. Birge, S. Huri, C. T. Riggs, and A. Tietze, numerous reprintings; present title,Redhouse Sozlugu, Igilizce-Turkce; Redhouse English-Turkish Dictionary.

1968: Redhouse Yeni Turkce-Ingilizce Sozluk; New Redhouse Turkish-English Dictionary, Istanbul; a new




work based on the 1890 dictionary and prepared by an editorial committee consisting of U. B. Alkim, N. Antel, R. Avery, J. Eckmann, S. Huri, F. Iz, M. Mansuroglu, and A. Tietze.

1971: Shorter Redhouse Turkish-English Dictionary; Kuf uk Redhouse Turk(!e-fngilizce Sozluk, Istanbul.



Documents

Sir James W. Redhouse (1811-1892): The Making of a Perfect Orientalist?