Dictionaries [998] لوامع النجوم المستضيئة من شمس العلوم

• Dictionaries.
• This manuscript is now IO Islamic 1436 in the India Office collections.
• [metadata: Otto Loth, A Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, (volume 1), no. 998 here with further notations and hyperlinks].

998.

1436. Size 10^3/4 in. by 6^1/4 in.; foll. 641. Twenty-five lines in a page.

A Dictionary of the Arabic Language, which is an abridgment of a larger work, called شمس العلوم , and is accordingly entitled لوامع النجوم المستضيئة من شمس العلوم. The author is not known.

The larger work in question was composed by Nashwân b. Sa’îd Ḥimyarî ¹(d. A.H. 573), whose son, according to Ḥ. Kh. iv. 74, also made an abridgment of it, with the title, ضياء الحلوم .

Begins:

الحمد لله الذى فضّل الانسان على سائر الحيوان الخ

The author restricts himself to lexicology, اللغات, leaving aside all the literary and descriptive matter of the original work. He says regarding the latter:

.. لكن كان محتويا على ذكر ملوك العرب و مشتملا على بعض قواعد علم الادب و على كل شئ من منافع الاشجار و طبائع الاحجار و على بعض ما يتعلق بالاحاديث و الاخبار و على تفسير بعض الآيات و تبيين بعض القرآءات و غير ذلك الخ

The alphabetical arrangement is the usual one, only all reduplicated stems stand first in each letter. The nouns are separated from, and precede, the verbs.

The letter Alif Begins:

كتاب الهمزة باب الهمزة و ما بعدها من الحروف المضاعف ( sic ) الاسماء فعل بفتح الفاء و سكون العين ب الابُّ المرعى د الادُّ القوة و هو الآد و الايد ايضا الخ.

It is in two parts, the first of which ends with the letter ش (fol. 221).

Plainly written. Of the eleventh century. Coloured lines round the pages.

A key to the شمس العلوم and its two abridgments, the ضياء and the present one, is to be found on the first page.

Bought at Lakhnau.

[Johnson.]

¹ A copy of this work is in the Wetzstein Collection of the Royal Library at Berlin, i., no. 149.