Searchable Online Version Firuzabadi, al-Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ القاموس المحيط للفيروزآبادي

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.