The Arabic Contributions to the English Language: An Historical Dictionary

This book consists of two parts. The first part includes an Introduction and three explanatory essays which deal with the salient semantic, grammatical and phonological features of the corpus of 2338 main entries which form the Dictionary. The second part consists of the Dictionary itself. Of the three explanatory essays, the one on semantics is by far the most interesting. It provides chronological information concerning the date of entry of Arabic borrowed terms in the English language, starting from the ninth century up to the present period. It further provides a general classification of the borrowed terms into semantic fields. It is this information which justifies the author's claim that, by studying these terms, we can construct a better picture of the contribution of Arabic and Islamic culture to the development of Western civilization.