The King’s Dictionary: The Rasulid Hexaglot: Fourteenth Century Vocabularies in Arabic, Persian, Turkic, Greek, Armenian and Mongol

Aden, of old one of the main Eerasian ports for goods from China, Southeast Asia and India on their way to the Mediterranean lands, was controlled during the 13th -15th centuries by the Rasulid dynasty. One of their kings, al-Malik al-Afdal al-Abbas b. Ali (1363-1377) wrote multilingual glossaries of extraordinary importance, universally termed the Rasulid Hexaglot . Its emergence caused quite a stir. This is an authorative translation, commentary and explanation of the socio-historical context surrounding this important text. The Arabic, Persian, Turkic, Greek, Armenian and Mongol languages in the King’s Dictionary were the most important tongues of the Eastern Mediterranean. The Greek, Armenian and Mongol sections, in particular, provide examples of transcriptions of living vernacular forms of the era.