''Al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr'' ( "The Great Dictionary" or "The Comprehensive Dictionary") is a

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

published by the

Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo The Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo () is a language academy for Arabic created in Cairo, Egypt in 1932 by Fuad I of Egypt. It publishes Al-Mu'jam al-Kabir (''The Great Dictionary'') and (''The Intermediary Dictionary''), two of the most i ...

History

''Al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr'', a historical dictionary intended to be encyclopedic in nature, was one of the most important tasks of the

from its inception, as laid out in the academy's foundational charter. It was one of the two dictionaries the academy planned to publish from its founding in 1932, the other being , intended to serve students. The German orientalist

August Fischer August Fischer (14 February 1865 in Halle an der Saale – 14 February 1949 in Leipzig) was a German orientalist. From 1883 to 1889 he studied theology and Oriental philology at the universities of Berlin, Marburg and Halle, receiving his d ...

, a member of the academy, provided his materials for the academy to develop into ''Al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr''. However, the academy was critical of Fischer's materials as they were limited to the pre-Islamic period and the first 300 years of the Islamic period, seeing his work as supplementary to a comprehensive dictionary. The academy sought go beyond Fischer's interest in the semantic development of individual words to focus on a more comprehensive analysis and description of Arabic vocabulary.

Taha Hussein Taha Hussein (, ar, طه حسين; November 15, 1889 – October 28, 1973) was one of the most influential 20th-century Egyptian writers and intellectuals, and a figurehead for the Nahda, Egyptian Renaissance and the modernism, modernist movem ...

was made responsible for the completion of the project. He appointed professor of

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...

at Cairo University Dr. and the head of the Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Education .

1956 publication

The project suffered from a lack of funding, but ''Volume I, Part 1'', covering

hamza Hamza ( ar, همزة ') () is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop . Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters and owes its existence to historical inconsistencies in the standard writing system. It is derived from ...

to " ʾ ḫ y ", was published in 1956. In 428 two-column pages, it covers a lexical range to which Edward William Lane devoted about 100 columns in his ''

Arabic–English Lexicon __NOTOC__ The ''Arabic–English Lexicon'' is an Arabic–English dictionary compiled by Edward William Lane (died 1876). It was published in eight volumes during the second half of the 19th century. It consists of Arabic words defined and explai ...

'' and to which Hans Wehr devoted about sixteen in his '' Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic''. The Preface, {{Lang, ar, تقديم (''taqdim''), describes the project the methods used. As von Grunebaum summarizes:

The difficulties facing the authors derive from the fact that of all living languages Arabic has had the longest productive life; the history of its development and spread has however been only imperfectly explored. In any event, Arabic poetry is known to have been composed during at least fifteen centuries, Arabic belletristic prose during some thirteen; besides, Arabic has served for an equally long period as a vehicle of scientific and philosophical thought. The language was transplanted from the desert to various urban milieus and has in its unusually varied history acquired a unique complexity and richness of vocabulary. That Arabic retained its identity throughout the vicissitudes of history is due above all to the fact that it is the language of the Koran.

It was printed at the

Amiri Press The Amiri Press or Amiria Press ( ar, المطبعة الأميرية, المطابع الأميرية) (''Al-Matba'a al-Amiriya'') (also known as the Bulaq Press () due to its original location in Bulaq) is a printing press, and one of the main ...

in Bulaq.

References

Arabic dictionaries Amiri Press publications