Self Publishing UK | The Encyclopaedic Bilingual Cross- Reference Dictionary of the Quran

By Gatie Niema Al-Hilfy

This Arabic – Arabic – English Dictionary of the Quran is the first of its kind ever, since no dictionary on Earth has adopted mixing the two systems, namely, the traditional Arabic root system and the non-Arabic alphabetical order. As for authoritative monolingual Arabic-Arabic Quranic Dictionaries, there is none that deals with “bare” words as such; rather they deal with alfaz lit.”utterances”, i.e derivatives. As for mixing the two systems, the Dictionary has no rival even among the purely linguistic ones or rather the only one, namely, Al-Wasit. As for other bilingual Arabic-English dictionaries of the Quran, the most famous one is that by the orientalist Penrice of 1873 which is a small and biased dictionary. The second one is that by Al-Nadawi, an Indian Muslim Scholar. Both dictionaries are Arabic-English with no “third explanatory extra Arabic language”. Furthermore, none is cross-referenced. This Arabic–English Dictionary can be, therefore, of great help to English-speaking readers (as well as Arabic-speaking ones) who do not need from now onwards, for the first time in the history of Arabic lexicography, to think of the root of the Arabic word though this very root system is strictly adopted in the whole Dictionary. Most important for the accuracy of meaning is that when a word has more than one meaning, which is very common in the Holy Qur’an, each new meaning is supported by one Quranic verse at least. There are almost 2700 Quranic verses, almost 43% of the whole verses of the Quran, in an accurate support of the Qur’anic meaning. This is extraordinary. Another outstanding feature is annexing the derivatives to each lexical entry up to four: a process which makes of the dictionary a real comprehensive indexed one at the same time.