''Al-Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ'' () is an Arabic dictionary compiled by the

lexicographer Lexicography is the study of lexicons and the art of compiling dictionaries. It is divided into two separate academic disciplines: * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionary, dictionaries. * The ...

and

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, Abū al-Ṭāhir Majīd al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ya’qūb ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shīrāzī al-Fīrūzābādī (1329–1414), commonly known as

Firuzabadi Firuzabadi ( ; 1329–1414), whose proper name was Abu 'l-Ṭāhir Muḥammad ib Yaʿqūb ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm Majd al-Dīn al-Shāfiʿī al-Shīrāzī (), was a Persian Sunni Muslim polymath. He excelled in hadith, grammar, philology, his ...

Description

Al-Firuzabadi originally intended to produce the largest dictionary, recording the complete language in sixty volumes. However, he ended up writing only two volumes, which nonetheless included a respectable sixty thousand entries. By being incredibly frugal with his definitions and adding a number of abbreviations to his dictionary, such as m (for ma'ruf, "known") to denote words of common usage that required no additional lexicographical description or j (for jam, "plural"), he was able to fit all these entries into such a small space. Modern Arabic dictionaries still use some of these abbreviations. The ''Qamus'' became a very popular dictionary for private use, to the point where the Arabic word for ''"Qamus"'' which means ''"Ocean"'' has become the current word for "dictionary".

Extension

The giant lexicon, ''

Taj al-'Arus min Jawahir al-Qamus ''Taj al-'Arus min Jawahir al-Qamus'' (, short title ''Taj al-'Arus;'' "The Bride's Crown from the Pearls of al-Qāmūs") is an Arabic language dictionary written by the Egyptian scholar Murtada al-Zabidi (1732–1790), one of the foremost philo ...

'' by

Murtada al-Zabidi Al-Murtaḍá al-Husaynī al-Zabīdī (), or Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Murtaḍá al-Zabīdī (1732–1790 / 1145–1205 AH), also known as Murtada al-Zabidi, was an Indian Sunni polymath based in Cairo. He was a Hanafi scholar, hadith special ...

authored this work as an extension. He completed, revised, and expanded the authoritative Arabic dictionary ''al-Qamus al-Muhit'', in order to compile an Arabic lexicon of such scope and comprehensiveness.

Digital conversion

In recent years, efforts have been made to convert Al-Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ into digital formats, such as the Lexical Markup Framework (LMF), to make it more accessible to modern researchers and scholars.https://aclanthology.org/L16-1150.pdf

References

{{Authority Control Arabic dictionaries Lexicography 14th-century books 15th-century books Arabic language Medieval literature