Takmilat al-Maajim al-Arabiyya
- Author died
- 1300 AH
- Editions
- Ministry of Culture and Information, Republic of Iraq
Takmilat al-Ma'ajim al-Arabiyya (French: Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, "Supplement to Arabic Dictionaries") is an Arabic lexicon compiled by the Dutch orientalist Reinhart Dozy (1235–1300 AH / 1820–1883 CE) to document post-classical, technical, and colloquial vocabulary absent from classical Arabic dictionaries .
Composition and Scope
Dozy considered the dictionary the realization of an ambition from his youth, collecting its material over forty years and spending eight years actively drafting and organizing it . He aimed to supplement traditional Arabic lexicons, which had restricted their scope to specific historical periods and locales, by recording new and specialized terms necessitated by cultural and scientific developments . The work focuses on vocabulary utilized by medieval and later authors, including historians, storytellers, geographers, botanists, physicians, and astronomers . Dozy intentionally omitted Sufi terminology, terms specific to the classical Arabic and Islamic religious sciences, and the technical nomenclature of the ancient sciences (ulum al-awa'il) .
Sources and Methodology
Dozy drew his material extensively from glossaries and vocabulary lists appended by European orientalists to their editions and translations of Arabic texts, bilingual dictionaries (such as Arabic–Latin, Spanish, Italian, English, and French lexicons), and accounts written by Western travelers in Latin, French, English, and German . Because he did not systematically cross-reference every term against classical Arabic dictionaries, he included some vocabulary already recorded in older lexicons, frequently relying on explanations provided in English by Edward William Lane in Madd al-Qamus (Arabic-English Lexicon) .
The lexicon incorporates numerous colloquial expressions without always designating them as dialectal or specifying their geographic regions . Entries vary in depth: while some terms are provided with detailed textual citations and explanations, others receive brief definitions or merely their equivalents in French, Greek, Latin, or Hebrew, or general labels such as "a type of bird" or "a plant" . Dozy arranged roots alphabetically, departing from standard Arabic ordering in cases of geminate roots (placing doubled forms like aff before afama, or amm before ama), and structured verbs according to the standard European grammatical numbering of derived forms (I to X) .
Publication, Reception, and Translations
The dictionary was first published in Leiden in two large volumes comprising 1,728 pages in Arabic and French between 1877 and 1881 . Its appearance led the English scholar Stanley Lane-Poole to withhold publication of the second part of Edward William Lane's lexicon, which had gathered similar lexical material . It was later reissued in Leiden and Paris (1927) and as a photographic offset reprint by Maktabat Lubnan in Beirut (1968) .
The French title was rendered into Arabic under several variants, including al-Mulhaq bi-l-Ma'ajim al-'Arabiyya and Dhayl al-Ma'ajim al-'Arabiyya, though Takmilat al-Ma'ajim al-'Arabiyya became the most widely recognized . An Arabic translation with annotations was produced in Baghdad and published by the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and Information: volumes 1 through 8 were translated and annotated by Muhammad Salim al-Nu'aymi, and volumes 9 and 10 were completed by Jamal al-Khayyat .
Answer updated