The classical dictionaries
Reader’s guides to the classical Arabic dictionaries quoted on al-nuqta’s root and word pages: who made each one, how it is organised, what evidence it relies on, and how to read its entries.
- Kitāb al-ʿAyn كتاب العين — al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad, as transmitted by al-Layth ibn al-Muẓaffar, al-Khalīl d. 170 or 175 AH / 786 or 791 CE. The dictionary credited to al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad: letters ordered by where they are sounded in the throat and mouth, each root filed with the rearrangements of its letters. Its entries set everyday words beside Qur'anic citations and poetry; who completed it is disputed.
- Gharīb al-Qurʾān fī Shiʿr al-ʿArab غريب القرآن في شعر العرب — Attributed to ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAbbās, Answers attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās (d. 68 AH / 687–8 CE); recorded versions from the late 9th–10th c. CE. Short exchanges in which a questioner, named as Nāfiʿ ibn al-Azraq, asks Ibn ʿAbbās about an unfamiliar Qurʾanic word, hears a brief gloss, then a line of poetry offered as proof. Attributed rather than authored; useful for early readings of single verses and their poetic witnesses.
- al-Muḥīṭ fī l-Lugha المحيط في اللغة — al-Ṣāḥib ibn ʿAbbād, 326–385 AH / 938–995 CE. A tenth-century dictionary that fills the framework of al-Khalīl's Kitāb al-ʿAyn with many more words, glossed tersely and with little quoted evidence. Most of what survives of al-Khārzanjī's apparently lost supplement to the ʿAyn survives here; check its claims against works that show their evidence.
- al-Ṣiḥāḥ الصحاح — al-Jawharī, d. 393 AH (1002–3 CE) or c. 400 AH (c. 1010 CE); disputed. A compact general dictionary of Arabic from about 1000 CE, filed by each root's last letter. Al-Jawharī set out to include only what he judged sound; his brief definitions, named authorities and grammatical arguments were absorbed, and corrected, by later dictionaries such as Lisān al-ʿArab.
- Maqāyīs al-Lugha مقاييس اللغة — Ibn Fāris, d. 395 AH / 1004–5 CE (other dates reported). Where he can, Ibn Fāris names the core sense or senses (uṣūl) he believed a root's words share, supports them with poetry, the Qur'an and earlier lexicons, and sets aside words that do not fit. The unifying senses are his proposals.
- al-Mufradāt fī Gharīb al-Qurʾān المفردات في غريب القرآن — al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, early 11th century CE (death date disputed). A dictionary of the Qur'an's own vocabulary from the early eleventh century. Many entries start from a word's basic sense and follow it through the verses; some explain how a sense was borrowed, extended or narrowed, or how a word differs from a near-synonym.
- al-Muḥkam wa-l-Muḥīṭ al-Aʿẓam المحكم والمحيط الأعظم — Ibn Sīda al-Mursī, d. 458 AH / 1066 CE. A large eleventh-century dictionary from al-Andalus, compiled by the blind grammarian Ibn Sīda on al-Khalīl's plan. Useful for word forms, plurals and irregularities, for its named authorities, and for Ibn Sīda's own judgements, which later dictionaries quote.
- Asās al-Balāgha أساس البلاغة — al-Zamakhsharī, d. 538 AH / 1144 CE. A twelfth-century phrase dictionary that sets out, under most roots, the concrete, everyday uses first and the figurative uses (majāz) after. Useful for seeing the images and idioms behind Qur'anic words, and for noticing where one scholar drew the line between literal and figurative.
- Mukhtār al-Ṣiḥāḥ مختار الصحاح — Zayn al-Dīn al-Rāzī, completed 660 AH / 1262 CE (a later date also circulates); d. after 666 AH / 1268 CE. A thirteenth-century abridgment of al-Jawharī's al-Ṣiḥāḥ: the commoner and Qur'anic vocabulary kept, most poetry dropped, verb vowelling fixed by model verbs, and short notes of the abridger's own, each flagged "I say".
- Lisān al-ʿArab لسان العرب — Ibn Manẓūr, 630–711 AH / 1232–1311/12 CE. Ibn Manẓūr's compendium merges five earlier works — three dictionaries, corrections to one of them, and a hadith glossary — largely in their own words. Useful for seeing, side by side, what earlier authorities said about a word, provided you track who is speaking.
- Tuḥfat al-Arīb تحفة الأريب بما في القرآن من الغريب — Abū Ḥayyān al-Gharnāṭī, 654–745 AH / 1256–1344 CE. A concise glossary of the Qur'an's less familiar words by Abū Ḥayyān, the Andalusian grammarian and exegete who worked in Cairo. Entries quote the Qur'anic form and usually give a one- or two-word equivalent, often suited to one particular verse, and seldom show evidence.
- al-Miṣbāḥ al-Munīr المصباح المنير في غريب الشرح الكبير — al-Fayyūmī, finished 734 AH / 1334 CE; author d. c. 770 AH / 1368 CE (uncertain). A fourteenth-century dictionary written to explain the difficult words of a Shāfiʿī law book. Compact and grammatical, it fixes how each word is voweled and conjugated, sometimes notes where a legal sense narrows ordinary usage, and weighs jurists' Arabic against earlier lexicographers.
- al-Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ القاموس المحيط — al-Fīrūzābādī, 729–817 AH / 1329–1415 CE. al-Fīrūzābādī's fourteenth-century digest of al-Muḥkam and al-ʿUbāb, written with al-Jawharī's al-Ṣiḥāḥ in view to mark what it lacked and where he judged it wrong. Terse lists of forms and senses, with abbreviations and few quotations; useful for surveying a root's recorded senses and vowellings.
- Tāj al-ʿArūs تاج العروس من جواهر القاموس — Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, d. 1205 AH / 1791 CE. An eighteenth-century commentary that wraps al-Fīrūzābādī's terse al-Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ in quotations from earlier lexicons, Qur'anic and poetic evidence, disputes, corrections and additions. It often shows who recorded a meaning and on what evidence; on our site the Qāmūs's words are not always bracketed apart.
- An Arabic–English Lexicon مدّ القاموس — Edward William Lane, published 1863–93 (Lane d. 1876). Lane put the medieval Arabic lexicons, read mainly through the Tāj al-ʿArūs, into English, naming a source for almost every sense and bracketing his own additions. He died at the letter qāf; entries from there on were published later, some only as notes.
- An Advanced Learner's Arabic-English Dictionary — H. Anthony Salmoné, preface dated 1889; published 1890. A compact Arabic–English dictionary for students, published in London in 1890: each root's verbs, nouns, plurals and prepositions with terse English equivalents, classical and nineteenth-century usage side by side, with no quoted evidence or named authorities.