This book (also known as Masāʾil Nāfiʿ b. al-Azraq) is a 250-entry dictionary of Quranic words written in a question-and-answer format. The questions are asked by Nāfiʿ b. al-Azraq and answered by ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAbbās (d. 687 CE / 68 AH), Companion (ṣaḥābī) of Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ.

Kitāb al-ʿAin is the first dictionary of the Arabic language ever written. It was written by al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad (died 786 CE / 170 AH) and organized by his friend and student the scholar al-Layth bin Muẓaffar al-Kinānī (al-Azharī considers al-Kinānī the true writer of Kitāb al-ʿAin). Kitāb al-ʿAin is one of the foundational texts of Arabic linguistics, as it is a primary source that does not depend on other texts, but on the vast knowledge of the writer himself. Al-Khalīl acted as a teacher to some of the greatest scholars of the Arabic language, including Sībawayh, al-Aṣmaʿī, al-Kisāʾī, Hārūn bin Mūsā al-Naḥwī, Wahb bin Jurayr and al-Juhdhumī.

ʿAbdul Malik al-Aṣmaʿī al-Bāhilī (died 831 CE / 216 AH) is one of the primary authorities on the Arabic language. His Ishtiqāq contains rare information, perhaps not found anywhere else, on the origins of certain Arabic words. Al-Aṣmaʿī studied under some of the great scholars of Islamic history, including Mālik ibn Anas, Sufyān al-Thawrī, al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī, Ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī, Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ Abū ʿAmr al-Baṣrī and al-Kisāʾī.

Al-Farq is a book concerned with the differences in terminology in words used to refer to human body parts compared to animal body parts. It was written by the Ibn Abī Thābit al-Lughawī, about whom little is known other than his being a respected grammarian of the Kufic school in the third century AH. There is a report of him being active in the year 220 AH, equivalent to c. 835 CE.

Al-Qāsim bin Salām, often referred to as Abū ʿUbayd (d. c. 839 CE / 224 AH) says that he spent forty years writing this book, which is concerned with difficult and unusual words found in the hadith of the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ. Abū ʿUbayd, who was mixed Arab and Persian, had made the study of hadith the work of his life, considering it a form of worship. His Gharīb al-Ḥadīth was one of the main references used by the scholars of hadith in their interpretation of texts of hadith.

This Risāla (Epistle) is a short work on terminology used in the book writing and publishing industry of Ibn Qutayba's time (d. 885 CE / 276 AH). Ibn Qutayba was a Persian scholar and polymath who served as a judge in Dīnawar (in Iran) during the Abbasid period.

Saʿīd b. Ibrāhīm al-Tustarī, known as Ibn al-Tustarī al-Kātib (d. 972 CE / 361 H) was a Christian poet and writer about whom apparently very little is known. His Mudhakkar wa-l-Muʾannath is a dictionary of the genders of Arabic nouns. This dictionary was formerly erroneously attributed to the mystic Sahl al-Tustarī on our website.

Ghulām Thaʿlab (d. 957 CE / 345 AH) was a Persian religious scholar and philologist from Khorasan who wrote books on the Quran, hadith and the Arabic language. His book ʿAsharāt fī Gharīb al-Lugha is a useful reference that many other scholars benefited from, such as Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī in his Buldān and al-Qayrawānī in his ʿAsharāt.

Al-Ṣāḥib bin ʿAbbād (d. c. 995 CE / 385 AH) was a Persian Shiite scholar, poet and grand vizier of the Buyid Dyansty, known as one of the greatest scholars of his age. His Muḥīṭ (not to be confused with Firuzabadi's Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ) is meant as a complete dictionary of Standard Arabic, comprising 1300 pages. The entries are arranged in the manner of al-Khalīl's Kitāb al-ʿAin.

This book, more commonly known as the Ṣiḥāḥ, caused a revolution in Arabic lexicography as it differed from the format preferrred by al-Khalīl bin Aḥmad (see Kitāb al-ʿAin, also on our site), giving the ḥurūf al-hijāʾ their own chapters, rather than treating them as second class. Al-Jawharī (d. 1003 CE / 393 AH) is one of the great linguists and lexicographers of the Arabic language. He came from the city of Fārāb on the Silk Road, in modern-day Kazakhstan, and traveled throughout the Middle East and Arabia in search of knowledge of the Arabic language. The Ṣiḥāḥ is one of the most commonly used dictionaries of the Arabic language to this day, and abridged versions of it, such as al-Rāzī's Mukhtār al-Ṣiḥāḥ, are still in print and used by both scholars and laymen.

Ibn Fāris (d. 1004 CE / 395 AH) is one of the great scholars of the Islamic world, having written important books on Arabic linguistics, poetry, the Quran and various Islamic sciences. He was Persian and came form the Caspian Sea area of Persia. His Maqāyīs al-Lugha is based on five books: Kitāb al-ʿAin of al-Khalīl bin Aḥmad, Gharīb al-Ḥadīth and al-Gharīb al-Muṣannaf of Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim bin Salām al-Harawī, Kitāb al-Manṭiq of Ibn al-Sikkīt (d. 858 CE) and Jamharat al-Lugha by Ibn Durayd (d. 933 CE / 321 AH).

Ibn Sīda al-Mursī (d. 1066 CE / 458 AH) was a blind Andalusian scholar of the Arabic language. His book Muḥkam is one of the largest and most extensive dictionaries of the Arabic language, taking up 28 volumes in print.

The Mufradāt of al-Isfahānī is perhaps the most widely used dictionary of the Quran, in print to this day. It was written by the Persian scholar al-Rāghib al-Isfahānī (d. c. 1109 CE / 502 AH), one of the great Islamic scholars of his age. Not much is known about al-Isfahānī, not even his proper first name.

Al-Zamakhsharī (d. 1143 CE / 538 AH) was one of the greatest scholars of the Islamic world in his time, in the sciences of hadith, interpretation of the Quran, Arabic linguistics and Arabic literary expression. His Asās al-Balāgha is a dictionary and phrasebook concerned with balāgha, the art of using the Arabic language in an eloquent and expressive manner as found in the Quran and the best Arabic poetry.

Abū Mūsā al-Madīnī (d. c. 1185 CE / 581 AH), was one of the foremost scholars of his time and his knowledge and piety attained great renown. Among his students is ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Maqdisī, the great scholar of hadith. Al-Madīnī Majmūʿ al-Mughīth is a dictionary concerned with interpreting difficult and ambiguous words and expressions used in hadith and the Quran.

Majd al-Dīn ibn al-Athīr al-Jazarī (d. 1210 CE / 606 AH) is the eldest of the three Ibn al-Athīr brothers. He was a famous judge and scholar of hadith and Arabic philology in the city of Mosul. His Nihāya was meant as a dictionary of rare and unusual words, expressions and usages in hadith, the Quran and Arabic literature, though its massive size gives it a more general scope as a dictionary of the Arabic language. This dictionary is sometimes misattributed to his younger brother the historian ʿAlī ibn al-Athīr.

Al-Muṭarrizī al-Khawārizmī (d. 1213 CE / 610 AH) was a scholar of both the Arabic and the Persian languages. Unlike many other scholars of the Islamic world, al-Muṭarrizī did not travel to seek learning. He sought knowledge in his homeland of Khawārizm, which was one of the world's active centers of knowledge in his time. He was born in the city in which al-Zamakhsharī died (al-Jurjānīya, modern day Urgench in Uzbekistan), causing him to be called "al-Zamakhsharī's successor". His Mughrib is his abbreviation of a larger linguistic work of his own, al-Muʿrib. Unlike other dictionaries, this dictionary also concerns itself with proper knowns, such as the names of places, while also containing many Persian terms that had entered usage in the Arabic of his time.

Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī (1179 - 1229) is one of classical Islamic civilization's major geographers. His Muʿjam al-Buldān is a geographical dictionary that covers history, ethnography, and myths related to the places mentioned. It is included on Lisaan.net by user request.

Al-Ḥasan bin Muḥammad al-Ṣaghānī (d. 1252 CE / 650 AH) was born in Lahore in modern-day Pakistan, growing up in Ghaznī in modern-day Afghanistan, spending part of his adult life in Hind (Indo-Pakistan) and others in Baghdad. He was a well-known scholar of hadith, the Quran and Arabic philology, besides being one of the best known Arabic-language lexicographers through his ʿUbāb al-Dhākhir. His Shawārid is concerned with non-standard pronunciations and usages of Arabic words and phrases, especially those found in the various qirāʾāt (variant readings) of the Quran.

The ʿUbāb is a dictionary of classical Arabic written by al-Ṣaghānī, author of al-Shawārid, also on our site. The ʿUbāb is unique in that the author verifies his quotations and usage examples through the use of primary sources, rather than relying on secondary ones, enabling his dictionary to rival and even excel the ones before it in its accuracy.

Al-Razī is the surname of many Persian scholars, since it is a reference to the ancient city of Rey in Persia, today an outlying part of the capital of Iran, Tehran. Zayn al-Dīn al-Razī (d. c. 1268 CE / 666 AH) is the author of Mukhtār al-Ṣiḥāḥ, an abbreviation of Tāj al-Lugha by the Persian philologist al-Jawharī, with added improvements by the author. Mukhtār al-Ṣiḥāḥ has been one of the most successful dictionaries of the Arabic language for the past eight centuries, in print to this day. Unlike other dictionaries of the Arabic language, which aim for completeness, al-Razī's goal was the ease of use.

The Alfāẓ is a small thesaurus written by the Andalusian scholar Ibn Mālik (d. 1274 CE / 672 AH), best known for his Alfīya, a versification of the rules of Arabic grammar.

The Iʿtimād is a dictionary dedicated to similar Arabic words that share all of their letters except for the letters ẓāʾ (ظ) and ḍād (ض), such as the words ḥāḍir (حاضر, "present") and ḥāẓir (حاظر, "prohibiter"). This is an important area of knowledge for the student of the Arabic language, as the similarities between these two letters often cause confusion and embarrassment for those writing in Arabic. This work was written by Ibn Mālik, with recent additions of relevant words neglected by Ibn Mālik by the Iraqi scholar and Baghdad University professor Dr. Ḥātim Ṣāliḥ al-Ḍāmin (b. 1938).

Lisān al-ʿArab is one of the largest and most detailed dictionaries of the Arabic language, written by the philologist, historian and Islamic scholar Ibn Manẓūr (died 1311 CE / 711 AH). In print the dictionary is 15 or 18 volumes, depending on the edition. Ibn Manẓūr based its contents strictly on five of the most trusted references of the Arabic language: Tahdhīb al-Lugha of al-Azharī (d. 980 CE / 370 H), al-Muḥkam wa al-Muḥīṭ al-Aʿẓam of Ibn Sīda (d. 1066 CE / 458 H), Tāj al-Lugha of al-Jawharī (died about 1003 CE / 393 H), Ibn Baray's commentary on the Tāj (d. 1178 CE / 582 AH), and al-Nihāya fī Gharīb al-Ḥadīth wa al-Athar by Ibn al-Athīr (d. 1233 CE / 630 H).

Abu Ḥayyān al-Gharnāṭī (d. 1344 CE / 745 AH) was an Andalusian scholar of the 14th century. He was famous for the depth and breadth of his knowledge of the Islamic and philological sciences, described by al-Ṣuyūṭī as the greatest grammarian, linguist and scholar of hadith and the Quran of his era. His Tuḥfa is a concise dictionary of difficult and unusual terms and usages found in the Quran.

Al-Fayyūmī (d. 1368 CE / 770 AH) was a 14th century Egyptian lexicographer who served as a mosque imam in Syria. His Miṣbāḥ is concerned with explaining technical terms used in al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr of the Shāfiʿī scholar Abū al-Qāsim al-Rāfiʿī al-Qazwīnī, which itself is a sharh (exposition) of al-Ghazzālī's al-Wajīz, a book concerned with Shāfiʿī jurisprudence. Al-Fayyūmī's Miṣbāḥ goes beyond being only a technical dictionary due to its wide scope, making it a general dictionary of the Arabic language with a focus on explaining technical words used in the science of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence).

Al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (died 1413 CE / 816 AH) was a Persian theologian, philosopher, astronomer and lexicographer, best known for his Kitāb al-Taʿrīfāt, a dictionary of legal, scientific and technical terms in use during his time. This book is one of the earliest technical dictionaries that appeared in the Arabic language.

Al-Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ is one of the most successful dictionaries of the Arabic language. So successful, in fact, that people began to use the first word of its title (Qāmūs) to mean "dictionary", instead of the standard Arabic word muʿjam, a practice that continues to this day. Firuzabadi (d. 1414 CE / 816 or 17 AH), whose full name is Abū Ṭāhir Majīd al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Shīrāzī al-Fayrūzābādī, was a Persian Islamic scholar from Fars Province in modern day Iran. He spent his life in Shiraz, Wasit, Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi and Mecca. His Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ is based on two previous dictionaries, al-Muḥkam of Ibn Sīda and al-ʿUbāb al-Dhākhir of al-Ṣaghānī, which itself was an expansion of al-Jawharī's Tāj al-Lugha. Firuzabadi added many improvements of his own and abbreviated the dictionary to contain only definitions, rather than containing usage examples from the Quran, hadith and Arabic poetry, which made his work more accessible to students. Firuzabadi was one of the top scholars of his time, achieving celebrity status and being honored by the rulers of the states he resided in.

Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505 CE / 911 AH) is one of the greatest and most prolific scholars of Islamic history. He was Egyptian and came from the town of Suyut, becoming a teacher at the age of 17. He was a scholar, jurist, theologian and university professor. His Maqālīd al-ʿUlūm is a technical dictionary made up of 1862 entries, dealing with terms used in the arts and sciences of his time, including but not limited to poetry, law, theology, astronomy, mathematics and philosophy.

This is a short dictionary made up of about 119 entries concerned with the meanings and origins of non-Arabic words used in the Quran.

Muḥammad al-Fattinī (died 1578 CE / 986 AH) is one of the great Indian scholars of hadith, who traced his lineage back to Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq, the close companion of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. His Biḥār al-Anwār is a 2800-page dictionary concerned with unusual words, phrases and usages found in the Quran and hadith.

Al-Tawqīf is a technical dictionary concerned with terms used in various areas of knowledge, including, but not limited to, Islamic theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, Arabic grammar, logic, astronomy and mysticism, with a focus on terminoloy used in Islamic mystical traditions, especially Sufism. Al-Munāwī (d. c. 1622 CE / 1031 AH) was prolific Egyptian Shāfiʿī jurist, grammarian, scholar of hadith and interpreter of the Quran, considered by some the foremost authority on Shāfiʿī jurisprudence during his time.

Kashf al-Ẓunūn by the Ottoman scholar Kâtip Çelebi (d. 1657 CE) is a bibliographic encyclopedia that lists 14,500 Arabic-language works in alphabetic order. Although not a lexicographic work, we chose to add due to it being requested by users.

The Dastūr is an 18th-century encyclopedic work written in the Arabic language. Unlike other lexicons, the author does not stop at definitions, but goes into the full details of the topics he writes about (spending 12 pages on algebra, for example), whether in matters of Islamic law, Arabic grammar and phraseology, tajwīd (the art of the recitation of the Quran), Islamic mysticism, sociology, physiology, medicine, astronomy, geology, logic, mathematics or physics. This allows the Dastūr to be used as a guide in some classical areas of knowledge, for example in learning the rules of Arabic grammar. The author does not stop at including the opinions of other scholars, he adds his own opinions and judgments on matters of dispute among scholars, whether in matters of law, linguistics or the natural sciences, sometimes spending pages arguing for his own position against other scholars. An unusual feature of this book is that while it is in Arabic, the author makes occasional use of Persian in brackets and often includes examples from Persian poetry, perhaps a reflection of the high status of the Persian language during the Mughal period. The writer is the Muslim Indian scholar Aḥmadnagarī (d. in the 18th century CE / 12th century AH), whose full name is al-Qāḍī ("the judge") ʿAbd al-Nabī b. ʿAbd al-Rasūl al-Aḥmadnagarī. His last name of Aḥmadnagarī refers to the city of Ahmednagar in India, 230 miles east of Mumbai.

The Kashshāf is a Perso-centric Arabic-language encyclopedia (besides the Dastūr of Aḥmadnagarī ) written by an Indian Muslim scholar. The Kashshāf is more than twice and a half larger than the Dastūr, taking up 3300 pages. It is also more technical, concerning itself only with terms used in the arts and sciences, rather than defining terms like a lexicon. Like the Dastūr, it makes ample use of Persian. The writer is Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Fārūqī al-Ḥanafī al-Tahānawī, who died in about 1777 CE / 1191 AH, though the encyclopedia itself was finished in about 1745 CE / 1158 AH. His name of al-Tahānawī (also written as Thanwi and Thanvi) refers to the village of Thana Bhawan in the state of Uttar Pradesh, close to Muzaffarnagar and Deoband and 120 km north of Delhi. Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Tahānawī should not be confused with other Indian scholars from Thana Bhawan who also share the Tahanawi/Thanwi last name, such as Ashraf Ali Thanwi (d. 1943 CE). A 1996 CE print of this encyclopedia included English and French translations of the headwords, included on our site as well.

Tāj al-ʿArūs is the largest dictionary of the Arabic language ever written, comprising 11,800 pages. It is a commentary on the 15th-century Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ of Firuzabadi. Murtaḍa al-Zabīdī (d. 1790 CE / 1205 AH) was a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence and the Arabic language from Belgram in West Bengal, India, from an Iraqi family that came from Wasit.

E.W. Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon (8 parts, London, 1863-93) is a major Arabic-English dictionary based on 112 sources, mostly medieval ones, along with al-Zabidi's Taj al-Aroos (also included in Lisaan.net). Lane died before he could finish the work, his great-nephew Stanley Lane-Poole finished it, publishing Volumes VI, VII and VIII from 1877–1893 using Lane's incomplete notes. Lane-Pool's work is of lower quality than Lane's. The work of Reinhart Dozy (see below) was meant as a supplement to Lane's work that covers modern Arabic (Lane focused on classical Arabic only). The digital text for the Lexicon was sourced from Tufts University under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. We used a TXT version created by an internet user named Navid-ul-Islam. Lisaan.net's version of the Lane Lexicon corrects various errors from both the Persues project (such as erroneous transcriptions of the Persian letter ژ) and the TXT version. Lisaan.net's version also provides helpful automatic annotations on the various abbreviations used by Lane.

Reinhart Dozy (died 1883 CE) was a Dutch scholar of the Arabic language, history and literature, of French descent. The Supplément took him 40 years to compile. He meant the dictionary as a supplement to more traditional dictionaries of the Arabic langauge, adding precision to such things as the names of plants by giving their (Western) scientific names. It is unique in that he based much of the work on Western orientalist sources, rather than on traditional Arabic dictionaries. Another important distinction is his inclusion of many words from colloquial Arabic, an area of knowledge ignored by traditional scholars of Arabic, and treating such words with the same respect and attention as Standard Arabic words, sometimes without even specificying that the words are non-Standard, a deed akin to heresy in the eyes of many traditionalist scholars of Arabic to this day. His Supplément is an important work for students interested in the Arabic language as it is spoken, which is often vastly different from standard Arabic.

Habib Anthony Salmoné was a British-educated scholar from Syria. The text for this dictionary was sourced from the Alpheos Project and originally provided by Tufts University under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

Abjad al-ʿUlūm is a 600-page encyclopedia of the sciences, especially the Islamic ones, by the Indian Islamic scholar Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān (d. 1890 CE). The book relies on al-Fārābī's Iḥsāʾ al-ʿUlūm (d. 950 CE), al-Khawārizmi's Mafātīḥ al-ʿUlūm (d. 847 CE), Tashkubrī Zādeh's Miftāḥ al-Saʿāda (d. 1561 CE) and Ḥājī Khalīfa's Kashf al-Ẓunūn (d. 1657 CE), the latter two sources being Ottoman scholarly works.

Hamiduddin Farahi (d. 1930 CE) was an Indian scholar of tafseer (exegesis of the Quran). His Mufradāt is a dictionary of 121 terms in the Quran, interpreted in light of modern exegetic theories, with reference to classical and modern Islamic, Jewish and Christian sources.

Aḥmad Aḥmad al-Badawī (d. c. 1968 CE) was an Egyptian poet and writer born in Damietta. This book is concerned with the balāgha (the art of literary expression) of the Quran. While not strictly a dictionary, its 50 sections enable it to be used as a dictionary of various terms concerned with this field.

Al-Taʿrīfāt al-Fiqhīya is a dictionary of terminology used in the field of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) written by the Bangladeshi scholar Muhammad al-Mujaddidi al-Barakati (d. 1974 CE / 1395 AH).

Abū al-Aʿlā Maududi (d. 1979 CE / 1399 AH) is one of the best known names in Islamic scholarship in modern history. He was an Indian-Pakistani scholar, philosopher and political activist. His Muṣṭalaḥāt is a study of four terms that he considers the foundations of all Quranic philosophy, the terms being al-ilāh ("deity", "god"), al-rabb ("the Lord"), al-dīn ("creed", "religion") and al-ʿibāda ("worship").

The Sultan Qaboos Encyclopedia of Arab Names was a project at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman patronized by that country's ruler. It covers a selection of over 36,000 names used by Arabs, including non-Arabic names (such as those used by Christian Arabs). It is a four-volume work. Unfortunately Lisaan.net holds the last three volumes only, due to the unavailability of the text of the first volume. While this lexicon's quality on the whole is acceptable, in certain (possibly rare) instances incorrect literal meanings for certain names are given.

Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din al-Hilali (d. 1987 CE / 1407 AH) was a renowned Moroccan Islamic scholar fluent in English and German, best known for his English translation of the Quran (with Muhammad Muhsin Khan) titled The Noble Qur'an. The present item is a short paper by him regarding non-Arabic words used in the Quran, in which he seeks to correct misconceptions by previous scholars regarding the origins of certain words.

Aisha Abd al-Rahman (died 1998 CE / 1419 AH) was an Egyptian author, scholar and professor of literature at Ain Shams University. Her Iʿjāz is a commentary and expansion on Ibn ʿAbbās's Gharīb, with much analysis and comparison. The book is made up of three parts. In the first two she writes about the field of Iʿjāz (The Quran's high art of expression), while the third part is in the style of a dictionary. It is this third part that is included on our website.

This is a 1900-page dictionary of the Arabic language published in 1998 CE. Unlike traditional dictionaries, it defines words, rather than roots, making it accessible to laypeople. The definitions are brief and concise. It was written by a team at the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo, including Ibrāhīm Muṣṭafa, Aḥmad al-Ziyāt, Ḥāmid Abd al-Qādir and Muḥammad al-Najjār.

Muʿjam al-Ṣawāb al-Lughawī is a 1000-page dictionary dedicated to correcting common errors in the usage of the Arabic language found in books, newspapers and television, written by the Egyptian linguist Ahmad Mukhtar Umar (d. 2003 CE) and his team.

Muʿjam al-Lugha al-ʿArabīya al-Muʿāṣira is a dictionary of contemporary Standard Arabic, 2500 pages in print. It was written by the Egyptian linguist Ahmad Mukhtar Umar (d. 2003 CE).

This is a dictionary of terminology used in the field of qirāʾāt (the study of the variant recitation formats of the Quran). It is an abbreviation of Muʿjam al-Muṣṭalaḥāt fī ʿIlmay al-Tajwīd wa-l-Qirāʾāt by the same author. The author is Dr. Ibrāhīm b. Saʿīd b. Aḥmad al-Dawsarī (b. c. 1966 CE / 1385 AH), a Saudi scholar of the Quran and professor of Quran studies at Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.