About the lexicon:The Arabic-English lexicon by Edward William Lane is a remarkable reference dictionary of the Arabic language for native speakers of the English language. It is widely recognized and used by many students who are learning Arabic and of whom Arabic is not their native language.
In my own personal experience I have found the lexicon to be more suitable for usage in translating from Arabic to English than with in-depth Arabic studies. What I mean by this is if I want to gain a better understanding of a particular Arabic word then I will refer to an Arabic dictionary as opposed to the lexicon. That is because in order to fully understand Arabic one must understand it by way of the language itself not by translation. The proof for this is in Mr. Lane’s own work. He used the Arabic dictionaries of the ‘Ulamaa of the language to compile his lexicon.
Don’t get me wrong the lexicon is very beneficial for the native English speaker as a reference work but if the lexicon had never been compiled the Arabic student could have still accessed the abundant Arabic works that were written and made available by the People of Knowledge. In the first volume the author cites all of the classical works and the names of the compilers that he used to base his lexicon off of. In fact his original plan for the lexicon was to translate the entire Taj-ul-‘Aroos into English but then he decided to sift through it and other works instead. In fact if you look at the format of his work and compare it with the dictionaries that he used you will find a striking resemblance.One down side to the lexicon is that the author only completed the first five volumes of it. So from volumes six through eight it becomes very deficient in terms of detail. This leaves out a large portion of the meanings of the Mithaal (those Arabic words that begin with Waaw or Yaa). Despite this you will still find a decent compilation of words from these last few volumes.
About the author:The author’s biography and the methodology that he used to compile this work are contained within the first portions of the lexicon itself. I found it very interesting to read about him because he spent close to thirty years working on this compilation.
I have come across several statements in various books implying that Mr. Lane embraced Islam. For example in Kais al-Kalby’s “Muhammad in the Bible” page 595 he wrote:
“A British Muslim, born in 1801 in Harvard, London. Lane studied the Language (Arabic) and culture of the Muslims…He became a Muslim in 1825 and married an Egyptian woman.”
Yet through admission of his own nephew Stanley Poole, Edward Lane never accepted Islam, he merely pretended to be Muslim so as to gain an in-depth knowledge of the Arabic language. He remained a devout Christian and Orientalist up until the day of his death.
This brings me to my final point regarding the author. When using this lexicon Muslim students of Arabic must keep in mind that the author was not from the People of Knowledge, not an Arabic grammarian in Nahw, Sarf, Balaaghah, Fiqh-ul-Lugah, or any of the other sciences of the Arabic language.
(A page from the Taaj-ul-'Aroos)The lexicon is available in several formats:
An eight volume version that was printed in India. I currently own this copy and while I tend to enjoy bulky and large print due to my poor eyesight if you have to travel with this edition you are going to face some difficulties due to its size and weight.
A two volume version that has been condensed. This version is ideal for travel but still bulky. It also seems to be more costly than the eight volume version and I still cannot figure out the reason why. Shop around though you may be able to find it at a decent price somewhere.
A CD version of the lexicon for those who prefer referencing via computer. It is much lighter and is ideal for laptop use.
A free online version of the lexicon is available. You can download the entire eight volume version in PDF format. Be advised that it is slow and tends to be a hardship when sifting through each page. I tend to benefit from it when I am at work and I need to look up a word or two that I am not familiar with. The link is: http://www.studyquran.co.uk/LLhome.htm
