Claudius Rich

[3] The Company's directors were so much impressed by Rich's linguistic attainments that they presented him with a writership on the Bombay Presidency, and thus changed his career from the military to the civil side.

At the same time he was provisionally attached as secretary to Charles Lock, who was proceeding to Egypt as consul-general, in order that he might improve his Arabic and Turkish under the consul's direction.

[1] Proceeding to Alexandria as assistant to Edward Missett, the new British consul-general there, he devoted himself to Arabic and its various dialects, and made himself master of Eastern manners and usages.

At Bombay, which he reached in September 1807, he was the guest of Sir James Mackintosh, whose eldest daughter Mary he married on 22 January 1808, proceeding soon after to Baghdad as the British Resident,[1] a post he held for six years.

[1] In 1813 and 1814 Rich suffered some ill health, and he and his wife travelled to Constantinople, where they stayed with the ambassador Sir Robert Liston,[3] and spent some time in Europe.

[6] He was then appointed to an important office at Bombay by Mountstuart Elphinstone, when he was attacked by cholera, during a visit to Shiraz, while exerting himself to help the sick and allay the panic among the inhabitants.