HYDE, THOMAS (1636-1703), English orientalist, was born at Billingsley, near Bridgnorth, in Shropshire, on June 29, 1636. At King's college, Cambridge, he studied oriental languages under Wheelock, and after only one year of residence, was invited to London to assist Brian Walton in his edition of the Polyglot 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 Hyde appended the Latin version which accompanies it in the Polyglot. After holding various preferments, he was at length appointed, in 1691, Laudian professor of Arabic; and in 1697, on the deprivation , of Roger Altham, regius professor of Hebrew and a canon of Christ Church. Under Charles II., James II. and William III. Hyde discharged the duties of Eastern interpreter to the court. He died at Oxford on Feb. 18, 1703. 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.
With the exception of the Historia religionis, which was repub lished by Hunt and Costard in 176o, the writings of Hyde, including some unpublished mss., were collected and printed by Dr.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, with a life of the author. Hyde also published a catalogue of the Bodleian library in 1674.