RICH, CLAUDIUS JAMES, born 28th March 1787, near Dijon in 13urgundy ; died of cholera at Shiraz on the 5th October 1821. Ile was brought up at Bristol. 1Vhile only eight or nine years of age he was attracted to Arabic, and by the age of fifteen he had made progress in IIebrew, Syriac, l'ersian, and Turkish. He travelled in Asia Minor, and became assistant to Colonel Missett, Consul General in Egypt, and joined via Cyprus. Dis guised as a Ilameluk, he travelled over much of Palestine and Syria, and from Aleppo he pro ceeded to Mardin and Baghdad to Bussora, and on to Bombay, which he reached in September 1807, and was then appointed Resident at Baghdad, where he remained till his death. His remains were interred -without the city walls ; but, to the disgrace of the prince Husain Ali Mirza, tha Persians could not allow them to repose undisturbed, and in 1826 the envoy to the Persian Court removed them to the Armenian burying-ground at Isfahan. He travelled in Kurdistan. He was the first to engage in a series of examinations of the ruins within the limits of ancient Assyria. The remains near MIMI, in the immediate vicinity of Baghdad, first engaged his attention. His discoveries amongst the ruins of
Babylon were of considerable interest, though in results far behind what has since been published. They consisted chiefly of fragments of inscriptions, bricks, engraved stones, and a coffin of wood ; but the careful account which he drew up of the' site of the ruins WR3 of greater value, and has formed the groundwork of all subsequent in quiries into the topography of Babylon. The results of his examination and researches at llillah and Babylon, with an able dissertation on the topography of ancient Babylon, and the position of its principal buildings, appeared at Vienna in an oriental literary journal called the Mines de l'Orient. This memoir was translated and published in London, and was followed by a second memoir, called forth by some remarks in the Archmologia by Major Rennell. The two have since been republished by his widow, entitled, Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon in 1811 ; Memoirs on the Ruins, and Journey to Persepolis, 1839. —Mignan's Travels, p. 90 ; Layard's Nineveh, i. pp. 22, 23.