Al-Qāmus al-Muḥīṭ

Al-Qāmus al-Muḥīṭ

Manuscript of the book displayed in the Islamic Calligraphy Museum of Tlemcen.
Author	Firuzabadi
Original title	القاموس المحيط، والقابوس الوسيط، الجامع لما ذهب من كلام العرب شماطيط
Language	Arabic
Subject	Arabic language, Lexicography
Genre	Dictionary
Published	14th century
Publication place	Persia
Media type	Print (original), Digital (modern)

Al-Qāmus al-Muḥīṭ (Arabic: القاموس المحيط, lit. 'The Encompassing Ocean') is an Arabic dictionary compiled by the lexicographer and linguist, Abū al-Ṭāhir Majīd al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ya’qūb ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shīrāzī al-Fīrūzābādī (1329–1414), commonly known as Firuzabadi.

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".

Commentary

The giant lexicon, Taj al-ʿArus Min Jawahir al-Qamus authored by Murtada al-Zabidi 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-Qāmus al-Muḥīṭ into digital formats, such as the Lexical Markup Framework (LMF), to make it more accessible to modern researchers and scholars.