Musa's Workshop

I never enjoy adding biographies and sourcing quotes, but little tidbits like this make me appreciate it a lot more: Ismāʿīl b. Ḥammād al-Jawharī, Abū Naṣr (d. 393/1003), was a leading lexicographer and grammarian. Originally from Farāb, he travelled widely through Iraq and the Ḥijāz, lived among the Bedouin to study their speech, and eventually settled in Nīshāpūr. He is famously remembered as the first to attempt human flight, fastening wooden wings to himself and leaping from his rooftop, only to fall to his death. His calligraphy was also esteemed, compared with that of the celebrated Ibn Muqla. His most important work is al-Ṣiḥāḥ fī al-lughah (The Correct), a two-volume dictionary. This was one of the earliest systematic attempts to arrange the Arabic lexicon by root letters and to record the purest Bedouin usages. Because of its precision and organisation, al-Ṣiḥāḥ became a foundational reference for Arabic lexicography and was heavily relied upon by later compilers. It set a model for scholarly dictionaries, ensuring that the lexicon of classical Arabic was preserved, systematised, and transmitted to subsequent generations. See: Khair al-Dīn b. Maḥmūd al-Ziriklī, al-Aʿlām, 15th ed. (Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm lil-Malāyīn, 2002), 1:313–14.