Detailed accounts of the lexical constituent of any language, to which the grammatical array of rules is added in order to produce correct utterances, are a must in applied linguistic description, as only they allow the thorough retrieval of information contained therein. In the case of ‘dead’ languages or dialects, works of this nature are even more necessary, as there is no possibility of elliciting information from natives. This is the case of Andalusi Arabic, practised in the Iberian Peninsula between the eighth and seventeenth centuries and a vehicle of an interesting folk literature, in prose and poetry, as well as of some legal deeds and personal letters with historical allusions of great value. These materials have been surveyed since the nineteenth and mainly during the twentieth century; however, the interest for such studies appears to have abated in recent decades, while a definitive assessment of their contribution to linguistics, literature and history has not yet been produced. Therefore, this dictionary will be helpful to scholars working on those fields from both the viewpoints of Western European and Western Islamic studies.
