Taj Al-ʿArus min Jawahir Al-Qamus (تَاج العَرُوس مِن جَوَاهِر القَامُوس, short title Taj al-ʿArus; "The Bride's Crown from the Pearls of al-Qāmūs") is an Arabic language dictionary written by the Egyptian scholar Murtada al-Zabidi (Arabic: محمد مرتضى الحسيني الزبيدي; 1732–1790), one of the foremost philologists of the Arab post-classical era. The monumental dictionary contains around 120,000 definitions, and is an expansion of Fairuzabadi's earlier Qamus Al-Muhit and Ibn Manzur's Lisan al-Arab. It is considered the largest Arabic dictionary ever written in history.
Begun in 1760, when al-Zabidi was 29 years old, the dictionary took him fourteen years to complete; he concluded it on the eighth of September 1774. The dictionary's introduction included a lengthy commentary on the dictionary of Fairuzabadi.
Zabidi's chose a feminine subject in the title of his dictionary in commemoration of his deceased wife; he made use of antecedents, particularly Fairuzabadi's Qamus and Ibn Manzur's Lisan al-Arab, and undertook multiple travels and meetings to validate his work. He expanded previous word definitions, added new entries, and corrected errors found in previous lexicographic works.
Zabidi's extensive bibliography numbered 115 consulted sources, including ones on Hadith and history. He also gave credit to previously unnamed authors.
References
- ^ Reichmuth, Stefan (2009-05-04). The World of Murtada Al-Zabidi: 1732-91 Life, Networks and Writings. Gibb Memorial Trust. pp. 54–59. ISBN 9781909724723.
- Stefan Reichmuth, Jörn Rüsen (2012). Humanism and Muslim Culture: Historical Heritage and Contemporary Challenges. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. p. 121. ISBN 9783899719376.
- Taj al-Arus min Jawahir al-Qamus تاج العروس من جواهر القاموس (in Arabic). Dar Sader. 2011. ISBN 9789953132563.
- al-Musawi, Muhsin J. (2015-04-15). The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction. University of Notre Dame Press. p. 84. ISBN 978-0-268-15801-9.
- Gouws, Rufus; Heid, Ulrich; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Wiegand, Herbert Ernst (2008-07-14). Wörterbücher / Dictionaries / Dictionnaires. 3. Teilband. Walter de Gruyter. p. 2443. ISBN 978-3-11-020339-4.
- El-Shamsy, Ahmed (2020-02-11). Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition. Princeton University Press. pp. 57–58. ISBN 978-0-691-20124-5.