Everything about Thomas Hyde totally explained
Thomas Hyde (
29 June 1636 –
18 February 1703) was an English
orientalist. The first use of the word
dualism is attributed to him, in 1700.
He was born at
Billingsley, near
Bridgnorth in
Shropshire, on
29 June 1636. He inherited his taste for linguistic studies, and received his first lessons in some of the Eastern tongues, from his father, who was rector of the parish.
In his sixteenth year Hyde entered
King's College, Cambridge, where, under
Abraham Wheelock, professor of
Arabic, he made rapid progress in Oriental languages, so that, after only one year of residence, he was invited to London to assist
Brian Walton in his edition of the
Polyglott Bible. Besides correcting the
Arabic,
Persic and
Syriac texts for that work, Hyde transcribed into Persic characters the Persian translation of the
Pentateuch, which had been printed in
Hebrew letters at
Constantinople in 1546. To this work, which
Archbishop Ussher had thought well-nigh impossible even for a native of Persia, Hyde appended the Latin version which accompanies it in the Polyglott.
In 1658 he was chosen Hebrew reader at
Queen's College, Oxford, and in 1659, in consideration of his erudition in Oriental tongues, he was admitted to the degree of M.A. In the same year he was appointed under-keeper of the
Bodleian Library, and in 1665 librarian-in-chief. Next year he was collated to a
prebend at
Salisbury, and in 1673 to the archdeaconry of
Gloucester, receiving the degree of D.D. shortly afterwards. As librarian, Hyde was responsible for the publication of the
Catalogus impressorum Librorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae (1674), the third published catalog of the Bodleian collections.
In 1691 the death of
Edward Pococke opened up to Hyde the
Laudian professorship of Arabic; and in 1697, on the deprivation of
Roger Altham, he succeeded to the
Regius chair of Hebrew and a
canonry of
Christ Church.
Under
Charles II,
James II and
William III, Hyde discharged the duties of Eastern
interpreter to the court. He resigned his librarianship in 1701, giving as a reason, "my feet being left weak by the gout, I'm weary of the toil and drudgery of daily attendance all times and weathers." He died at Oxford on
18 February 1703.
Hyde, who was one of the first to direct attention to the vast treasures of Oriental antiquity, was an excellent classical scholar, and there was hardly an Eastern tongue accessible to foreigners with which he wasn't familiar. He had even acquired
Chinese from the Chinese Jesuit
Michael Shen Fu-Tsung, while his writings are the best testimony to his mastery of
Turkish, Arabic, Syriac, Persian,
Hebrew and
Malay.
In his chief work,
Historia religionis veterum Persarum (1700), he made the first attempt to correct from Oriental sources the errors of the Greek and Roman historians who had described the religion of the ancient Persians. He identified
Zoroaster as a religious reformer.
His other writings and translations comprise
Tabulae longitudinum et latitudinum stellarum fixarum ex observatione principis Ulugh Beighi (1665), to which his notes have given additional value;
Quatuor evangelia et acta apostolorum lingua Malaica, caracteribus Europaeis (1677);
Epistola de mensuris et ponderibus serum sive sinensium (1688), appended to
Edward Bernard's
De mensuris et ponderibus antiquis;
Abraham Peritsol's
Itinera mundi (1691); and
De ludis orientalibus libri II (1694).
With the exception of the
Historia religionis, which was republished by Hunt and Costard in 1760, the writings of Hyde, including some unpublished MSS., were collected and printed by Dr
Gregory Sharpe in 1767 under the title
Syntagma dissertationum quas olim Thomas Hyde separatim edidit. There is a life of the author prefixed.
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