What others said about Arabic Read in the original
Describing how Europe began by relying on al-Jawhari, al-Firuzabadi and Ibn Manzur to read Arabic texts:
“Why should they have compiled dictionaries of their own, when the Arabic lexica offered comprehensive works whose reliability seemed guaranteed by the labour of many generations of scholars?”
Manfred Ullmann
b. 1931
German Arabist of the Tübingen «Wörterbuch der klassischen arabischen Sprache», and author of works on Arabic medicine and science.
Original text — German
Wozu hätte man eigene Wörterbücher kompilieren sollen, da in den arabischen Lexika doch umfassende Werke vorlagen, deren Zuverlässigkeit durch die Arbeit vieler Generationen von Gelehrten verbürgt zu sein schien?
In Arabic
وما حاجتُهم إلى تصنيف معاجمَ من عندهم، وبين أيديهم في المعاجم العربيّة أعمالٌ جامعة، بدا أنّ عملَ أجيالٍ كثيرةٍ من العلماء يكفل وثوقَها؟
Source
Die Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen und die Anfänge des arabischen Wörterbuches, Tübingen: Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen, 2003, p. 144
The English translation is Voice of Arabic's, made from the original.
He wrote in German; the Arabic and English are our translations. His «seemed» (zu sein schien) reports what Europeans took to be so: the next paragraph shows that the method fell short by modern standards, while granting the importance of those dictionaries.
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