ii. Alphabetical dictionaries

The first Persian dictionaries were of the alphabetical type, and reputedly appeared soon after the earliest court poetry in New Persian.  They were compiled by poet-scholars, with the object of clarifying their own or others’ rare, figurative, or dialectal vocabulary – especially that of the court poets of Bukhara under the Samanid dynasty (819-1005), where literary New Persian was evolving. Early works, of which no trace remains, have been attributed, without strong evidence, to the 10th-century poet-musician Abu Ḥafṣ Soḡdi (see Dabirsiāqi, pp. 8-9; Baevskii, pp. 30-31) and to the poets Rudaki (d. ca. 940) and Farroḵi (d. ca.1037). The first reliably reported, though not extant, alphabetically-arranged defining dictionary was compiled by the 11th century poet Qaṭrān, whose mother tongue was probably (pre-Turkish) Azeri (Āḏari; for its development, see Azarbaijan vii-ix). Nāṣer-e Ḵosrow (pp. 7-8) described how he glossed verses of two popular poets of Khorasan for this “good poet” who “did not know Persian very well” (see Baevskii, pp. 32-42). The earliest extant dictionary, the Loḡat-e fors (ca. 1066) by Asadi Ṭusi, was compiled by an epic poet from Ferdowsi’s hometown but, like that of Qaṭrān, produced in Azarbaijan.  It spotlighted a broader range of both Dari and archaic Pahlavi lexis in the poetical koinē.  Differences in the title, text, and prefaces of various manuscripts suggest that this dictionary originated as a number of word-lists given by Asadi to his students to complete and to provide with verse examples of usage (see DICTIONARIES i. Persian Dictionaries).

Asadi and his immediate followers in Iran arranged their entries alphabetically by final, not initial, letter; their works could thus be used additionally as dictionaries of rhyme. Over time this ordering, as well as its alternatives, became progressively more systematic, with second-level ordering by initial letter.  Such was Moḥammad Hendušāh Naḵjavāni’s larger Ṣeḥāḥ al-fors (ed. ʿA.-ʿA. Ṭāʿati, Tehran, 1962), which was modeled on Jawhari’s Arabic dictionary, Ṣeḥāḥ al-loḡa and compiled in 1328.  The third level of alphabetization, when introduced, used either the medial or the penultimate letter.  Each new letter was flagged with a category word: at the first level ketāb or bāb “chapter” (e.g., bāb al-jim; bāb in this usage was an Arabic calque on Middle Persian dar “gate, door; chapter”), and at subordinate levels with terms such as faṣl “section.” Later, Persian terms such as guna “sort” and baḵš “part” were also used.  Definitions varied greatly in completeness, from one or two synonyms to extensive explanations; since the poetical corpus included place and personal names, a personage in the Šāh-nāma, for instance, might merit a brief biography.  Most compilers of dictionaries justified definitions and exemplified usage by quoting verses from earlier poets (šāhed, pl. šawāhed  “witness”).  Thus in general aims and structure, the classic Persian defining dictionary – not surprisingly – resembled its immediate predecessor and continuing partner in the marshaling of Islamicate literature, the Arabic dictionary.

Similarly based on Asadi were the Majmuʿat al-fors of Abu’l-ʿAlā Jāruti, known as Ṣafi Kaḥḥāl, and Šams-e Faḵri Eṣfahāni’s Meʿyār-e Jamāli wa meftāḥ-e Abu Esḥāqi.  The former was compiled around 1300, and the cited poets range from Ferdowsi down to Saʿdi.  The latter was compiled around 1344, and comprised the fourth part of the earliest treatise on Persian poetics.  It is also the most important repository of Asadi’s legacy.