Arabic English Lexicon- Dictionary (Set of 2 Volumes)

In the year 1842, a most generous offer made to me by the present Duke of Northumberland (then Lord Prudhoe) enabled me to undertake the composition of this work; and to His Grace's princely aid I have ever since been mainly indebted for the means of accomplishing the project thus originated.
The object proposed was not to do in English little more than what Golius and others had already done in Latin, by translating and composing from a few Arabic lexicons of the class of epitomes or abstracts or manuals; but to draw chiefly from the most copious Eastern sources; one of which, comprising in about one seventh part of its contents the whole of the celebrated Kamoos, I knew to exist in Cairo. There, also, I had reason to believe that I might find other sources unknown in Europe, and obtain more aid in the prosecution of my design than I could elsewhere; and thither, therefore, I betook myself for this purpose.
On my arrival at Cairo, I first had recourse, for help in making my preparations, to an accomplished Arabic Scholar, the late M. Fulgence Fresnel, with whom, during a former residence in Egypt, I had contracted an intimate friendship. Previously informed by me of my project, he had tested the qualifications of several learned natives for the task of assisting me in collecting, transcribing, and collating, the materials from which my lexicon was to be composed; and he recommended to me, as the person whom he esteemed the most fit, the sheykh Ibraheem (surnamed 'Abd-el-Ghaffar) Ed-Dasookee. To have engaged as my coadjutor a sheykh respected for his character and learning, and to have been disappointed in him, and obliged to dismiss him, might have made him my and enabled and induced him to baffle my scheme; but my experience led me to believe that a person better qualified for the services that I required of him, than the sheykh Ibrábeem Ed-Dasookee, could not have been found by me in Cairo; and I had no occasion to employ any other assistant, except, occasionally, transcribers, under his supervision.