Muhammad ibn Mukarram ibn Alī ibn Ahmad ibn Manzūr al-Ansārī al-Ifrīqī al-Misrī al-Khazrajī also known as Ibn Manẓūr (June–July 1233 – December 1311/January 1312) was an Arab lexicographer of the Arabic language and author of a large dictionary, Lisan al-ʿArab (لسان العرب; lit. 'The Tongue of the Arabs' )

Biography

Ibn Manzur was born in 1233 in Ifriqiya (present day Tunisia). He was of Arab descent, from the Banu Khazraj tribe of Ansar as his nisba al-Ansārī al-Ifrīqī al-Misrī al-Khazrajī suggests. Ibn Hajar reports that he was a judge (qadi) in Tripoli, Libya and Egypt and spent his life as clerk in the Diwan al-Insha', an office that was responsible among other things for correspondence, archiving and copying. Fück assumes to be able to identify him with Muḥammad b. Mukarram, who was one of the secretaries of this institution (the so called Kuttāb al-Inshāʾ) under Qalawun. Following Brockelmann, Ibn Manzur studied philology. He dedicated most of his life to excerpts from works of historical philology. He is said to have left 500 volumes of this work. He died around the turn of the years 1311/1312 in Cairo.

Works

Lisān al-ʿArab

(لسان العرب, "Tongue of Arabs") was completed by Ibn Manzur in 1290. Occupying 20 printed book volumes (in the most frequently cited edition), it is the best known dictionary of the Arabic language, as well as one of the most comprehensive. Ibn Manzur compiled it from other sources to a large degree. The most important sources for it were the Tahdhīb al-Lugha of Azharī, Al-Muḥkam of Ibn Sidah, Al-Nihāya of Ibn Athīr and Jauhari's Ṣiḥāḥ, as well as the ḥawāshī (glosses) of the latter (Kitāb at-Tanbīh wa-l-Īḍāḥ) by Ibn Barrī. It follows the Ṣiḥāḥ in the arrangement of the roots: The headwords are not arranged by the alphabetical order of the radicals as usually done today in the study of Semitic languages, but according to the last radical - which makes finding rhyming endings significantly easier. Furthermore, the Lisān al-Arab notes its direct sources, but not or seldom their sources, making it hard to trace the linguistic history of certain words. Murtaḍá al-Zabīdī corrected this in his Tāj al-ʿArūs, that itself goes back to the Lisān. The Lisān, according to Ignatius d'Ohsson, was already printed in the 18th century in Istanbul, thus fairly early for the Islamic world.

Published editions of the Lisān al-'Arab

Other works

Sources