Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/120

 conspicuous part, and when in March 1895 an agreement was signed between Great Britain and Russia for the delimitation of their spheres of influence in central Asia, Gerard was sent out to the Pamirs at the head of a British commission. He met the Russian mission under general Shveikovsky in June at Lake Victoria, and from that point eastwards to the Chinese frontier demarcated the line which henceforth divided Russian from British interests. In 1896 he was nominated to the command of the Hyderabad contingent, and in 1899 was promoted to the command of a first-class district in Bengal. He was created C.S.I, in 1896, K.C.S.I. in 1897, and K.C.B. in 1902. He was promoted major-general on 1 April 1897, lieutenant-general on 12 Sept. 1900, and general on 29 Feb. 1904. On the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war in 1904 he went out to Manchuria as chief British attache in General Kuropatkin's army; but his health succumbed to the rigours of the campaign, and he died of pneumonia at Irkutsk on 26 July 1905 on his way home from Kharbin. A requiem mass was sung at the catholic church of St. Catherine's, St. Petersburg, at which both the Tsar and King Edward VII were represented. The body was subsequently conveyed to Scotland, and buried at Airdrie on 8 September. He married on 19 Sept. 1888 Helen Adelaide, third daughter of Edward Richard Meade, a grandson of John Meade, first earl of Clanwilliam; she survived him with one son. Gerard was devoted to all forms of sport, especially big-game shooting, and recorded his experiences in 'Leaves from the Diaries of a Soldier and a Sportsman, 1865–1885' (1903).

 GIBB, ELIAS JOHN WILKINSON (1857–1901), orientalist, born on 3 June 1857 at 25 Newton Place, Glasgow, was only son of Elias John Gibb, wine merchant, and Jane Oilman. Both parents survived their son. He was educated first at Park School, Glasgow, under Dr. Collier, author of the 'History of England,' and afterwards at Glasgow University, where he matriculated in 1873, and pursued his studies until 1875, but took no degree. Prompted on the one hand by a strong linguistic taste, and on the other by an early delight in the book of the 'Thousand and One Nights' (Alf Layla wa Layla), and other Eastern tales, Gibb, who was well provided for, devoted himself at an early period to the Arabic, Persian, and more especially Turkish languages and literatures. Gavin Gibb, D.D., a cousin of his grandfather, who was professor of oriental languages in the University of Glasgow from 1817 to 1831, seems to be the only connection in Gibb's family history with oriental scholarship. It was apparently without external help or suggestion that Gibb published in 1879, when only twenty-two, an English translation of the account of the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, given by Sa'du'd-Din in the 'Tuju 't-Tevárikh' or 'Crown of Histories.' In 1882 there followed his 'Ottoman Poems translated into English Verse in the Original Forms,' which was the forerunner of his detailed and ambitious 'History of Ottoman Poetry,' on which he gradually concentrated his energies. In 1884 he translated from the Turkish of Ali Aziz the 'Story of Jewad.'

Moving to London on his marriage in 1889, and collecting a fine oriental library, Gibb lived the life of a studious recluse, rarely going further from London than Glasgow to stay with his parents. He travelled in France, and Italy in 1889, but never visited Turkey or any Eastern country, although he spoke and wrote the Turkish language correctly, and acquired through his reading a profound sympathy with Mohammedan thought. He joined the Royal Asiatic Society about 1881. The first volume of his work on Ottoman poetry, containing an introduction (pp. 1–136) to the whole subject, not less useful to students of Arabic and Persian than to those of Turkish literature, and an account of the earlier period of Ottoman poetry (A.D. 1300–1450), was published in 1900, but in November next year, while he was putting the final touches to the second volume, he was attacked by scarlet fever, of which he died on 5 Dec. 1901. He was buried at Kensal Green cemetery, his funeral being attended by the Turkish poet 'Abdu'l Haqq Hamid Bey and other Mohammedan friends and admirers.

In 1889 Gibb married Ida W. E. Rodriguez (afterwards Mrs. Ogilvie Gregory). On his death his library was, with small reservations, divided among the libraries of the British Museum (which received his manuscripts), the Cambridge University (which received his Arabic, Persian and Turkish books), and the British Embassy at Constantinople (which received many valuable works on the East). A summary