Description

The product of over thirty years of unrelenting labour, Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon is the most scholarly dictionary of the Arabic language available. Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon is a work of such unique greatness that, since its first appearance almost 150 years ago, it has never been supplanted and remains supreme in the field of Arabic lexicography.

As it originally appeared and was later reproduced, Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon consisted of eight large, cumbersome volumes, which made it difficult to use. Now, for the first time, the Islamic Texts Society has, with no loss whatsoever of clarity or legibility, brought together the eight large volumes into two compact volumes; it is now possible to keep the Arabic-English Lexicon on the work desk and refer to it with ease.

E. W. Lane (d. 1876) was a British Orientalist, translator and lexicographer.

‘It is a work of such fundamental importance and of such matchless excellence that praise for it is quite superfluous. Every Arabist has had good cause to bless him for his superhuman labour… It is certainly true to say that every work produced in this century relating in any way to Arabic studies has drawn heavily upon the Lexicon.’
A. J. Arberry.