Firuzabadi

Abu ’l-Ṭāhir Muḥammad b. YaʿḲūb b. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm Mad̲j̲d al-Di̊n al-S̲h̲āfiʿī al-S̲h̲īrāzī also known as al-Fayrūzabādī (الفيروزآبادي (1329–1414) was a grammarian and a leading lexicographer in his time.  He was the compiler of al-Qamous (القاموس), a comprehensive and,  for nearly five centuries, one of the most widely used Arabic dictionaries.

Name
He was Abū al-Ṭāhir Majīd al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ya'qūb ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shīrāzī al-Fīrūzābādī (أبو طاهر مجيد الدين محمد بن يعقوب بن محمد بن إبراهيم الشيرازي الفيروزآبادي), known simply as Muḥammad ibn Ya'qūb al-Fīrūzābādī (محمد بن يعقوب الفيروزآبادي). His nisbas "al-Shīrāzī" and "al-Fīrūzābādī" refer to the cities of Shiraz (located near Kazerun, his place of birth) and Firuzabad (his father's hometown) in Fars, Persia, respectively.

Life
Firuzabadi, was of Persian  origin, and was born in Kazerun, Fars, Persia, and educated in Shiraz, Wasit, Baghdad and Damascus. He spent ten years in Jerusalem before travelling in Western Asia and Egypt, and settling in 1368, in Mecca for almost three decades. From Mecca he visited Delhi in the 1380s. He left Mecca in the mid-1390s and returned to Baghdad, then Shiraz (where he was received by Timur) and finally travelled on to Ta'izz in Yemen. In 1395, he was appointed chief qadi (judge) of Yemen by Al-Ashraf Umar II, who had summoned him from India a few years before to teach in his capital. Al-Ashraf's marriage to a daughter of Firūzābādī added to Firuzabadi's prestige and power in the royal court. In his latter years, Firūzābādī converted his house at Mecca, and appointed three teachers, to a school of Maliki law.

Influence
Al-Firuzabadi was the final authority in lexicographical history to cite his sources for each factual information he documented. There are around fifty references to the earlier lexicographical works in this collection. Al-Firuzabadi was so troubled by the requirements for a valid entry that he went so far as to enumerate the line of transmission from himself to Ibn Hajar, who obtained it verbally from al-Firuzabadi.

Long after his passing, al-Firuzabadi's significant contribution to the evolution of lexicography in Egypt persisted. This was particularly the case for Hadith scholars in later times. But he wasn't by himself. Al-Sabban, who trained under al-Firuzabadi, likewise blended philological research with hadith study. Fakhr al-Din b. Muhammad Tuwayh was another writer who worked in lexicography and hadith during al-Firuzabadi's time. He wrote "Mama' al-Bahrayn wa Malta' al-Nitrayn," which was written to address the ambiguities in the Qur'an and Hadith.

Sufism and relations with Ibn Arabi
Firuzabadi composed several poems lauding Ibn Arabi for his writings, including the وما علي إن قلت معتقدي دع الجهول يظن العدل عدوانا. Ibn Arabi's works inspired Firūzābādī's intense interest in Sufism.

Selected works

 * ("The Surrounding Ocean"); his principal literary legacy is this voluminous dictionary, which amalgamates and supplements two great dictionaries; Al-Muhkam by Ibn Sida (d. 1066) and Al-ʿUbab (العباب الزاخر واللباب الفاخر) by al-Saghānī (d. 1252).  Al-Saghānī's dictionary had itself supplemented the seminal medieval Arabic dictionary of Al-Jawharī (d. ca. 1008), titled al-Sihah. Firūzābādī also produced a concise simplified edition using a terse notation system and omitting grammatical examples of usage and some rarer definitions. The larger-print-two-volume concise dictionary proved much more popular than the vast Lisan al-Arab dictionary of Ibn Manzur (d. 1312) with its numerous quotations and usage examples.
 * Al-Bulghah fī tārīkh a'immat al-lughah (البلغة في تراجم أئمة النحو واللغة) (Damascus 1972, in Arabic).