Al-Jim
- Author died
- 206 AH
- Editions
- General Authority for Amiri Printing Affairs
Kitab al-Jim (Arabic: كتاب الجيم), also referred to as Kitab al-Nawadir al-ma'ruf bi-harf al-Jim, is an early Arabic dictionary and compendium of rare vocabulary compiled by the Kufan philologist and transmitter Abu Amr al-Shaybani (d. 206 AH / 821 CE; other reports give 205 AH or 213 AH) .
Title and Composition
The work lacks an authorial introduction defining its methodology or explicitly explaining its name . In classical bibliographies such as Ibn al-Nadim's al-Fihrist, it is listed under the titles Kitab al-Jim and Kitab al-Nawadir al-ma'ruf bi-harf al-Jim . Several explanations have been advanced for its title:
- A conjecture by earlier scholars suggested the dictionary was named Al-Jim because it either began or ended with the letter jīm . However, Abu al-Tayyib al-Lughawi examined a copy and clarified that the work does not begin with jīm .
- Modern editor Ibrahim al-Ibyari noted that al-jīm in rare Arabic usage can mean fine brocade (al-dībāj), which the author may have chosen as a figurative title reflecting the book's value . Alternatively, he suggested the author may have chosen the letter jīm to avoid beginning with bā' (which required specifying diacritical dots) or because jīm combines the phonetic qualities of loudness and strength (al-jahr wa-l-shidda) .
Abu Amr compiled the material during his extensive field collection among bedouin tribes in the desert, gathering the poetry and dialects of more than eighty Arab tribes .
Structure and Method
Kitab al-Jim represents one of the earliest Arabic lexicons arranged according to the standard alphabetical (hijāʾī) order of root-initial letters . Words are listed under their initial letter after stripping augmentative letters, though the internal entries within each letter chapter are not arranged alphabetically by their second and third radicals .
Because the compilation focuses heavily on rare expressions (gharīb) and dialectal usages tied to specific tribes rather than covering the general lexicon systematically, scholars have noted that it functions as a collection of linguistic rarities (nawādir) as much as a conventional dictionary . In the first twenty-seven pages alone, vocabulary from no fewer than thirty distinct tribes is cited . The text contains an extensive corpus of poetic citations (shawāhid), many drawn from obscure tribal poets whose verses are preserved nowhere else in classical Arabic literature . Certain chapters appear truncated or contain poetic verses without accompanying commentary, indicating that the author died before producing a final, fully polished draft .
Transmission and Manuscript Tradition
Abu Amr al-Shaybani did not dictate the book or hold reading sessions for it during his lifetime, and consequently no formal chain of transmission (riwāya) was established directly from him . Copies were transcribed only after his death, leaving the text scarce and little cited by later classical lexicographers .
The work has survived in a single manuscript preserved at the El Escorial library near Madrid (MS Escorial 572), consisting of 550 pages . The scribe noted that he synthesized two primary ancestral transcripts copied directly from the author's original: one by the grammarian Abu Sa'id al-Sukkari and the other by Abu Musa al-Hamid (also read al-Hamid), using the latter to supply folios missing from al-Sukkari's copy . The Escorial manuscript bears ownership inscriptions by several scholars, including the grammarian Ibn Hisham al-Ansari and his son Muhammad, Ali ibn Muhammad al-Qabuni al-Hanafi (dated Rabi' al-Awwal 844 AH), and Muhammad ibn Ahmad, the preacher of Darayya .
Modern Reception and Editions
The significance of the dictionary was highlighted in modern scholarship by orientalists such as Fritz Krenkow . In 1968, Werner Diem completed a detailed doctoral dissertation on Kitab al-Jim at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (published in Arabic translation in 1980), establishing that a substantial portion of its lexical data and poetic citations are unique to the work and absent from later lexicons .
The complete text was published in Cairo by the Academy of the Arabic Language across three text volumes and a separate index volume:
- Volume 1, edited by Ibrahim al-Ibyari and reviewed by Muhammad Khalaf Allah Ahmad (1974) .
- Volume 2, edited by Abd al-Alim al-Tahawi and reviewed by Muhammad Mahdi Allam (1974) .
- Volume 3, edited by Abd al-Karim al-Izbawi and reviewed by Abd al-Hamid Hassan (1975) .
- A comprehensive index volume prepared by Muhammad Ali al-Zimiti, Muhammad Abd al-Aziz al-Qalamawi, and Abd al-Wahhab Awad Allah, supervised and introduced by Mustafa Hijazi (1983) .
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