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12-545: A biographical dictionary is a type of encyclopedic dictionary limited to biographical information. Many attempt to cover the major personalities of a country (with limitations, such as living persons only, in Who's Who , or deceased people only, in the Dictionary of National Biography ). Others are specialized, in that they cover important names in a subject field, such as architecture or engineering. Tarif Khalidi claimed

24-418: A Muslim historian Ibn Asakir . When it comes to the numbers of individuals, American scholar of Islam Richard Bulliet argues that "a brief look at Brockelmann 's Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur is sufficient to convince anyone that the number of individual biographies extant must run into the hundreds of thousands and most likely into the millions." Encyclopedic dictionary Historically,

36-495: A somewhat distinct class of reference books. While there are similarities to both dictionaries and encyclopedias, there are important distinctions as well: Compared to a dictionary, the encyclopedic dictionary offers a more complete description and a choice of entries selected to convey a range of knowledge. Compared to an encyclopedia, the encyclopedic dictionary offers ease of use, through summarized entries and in some cases more entries of separate terms; and often reduced size, and

48-600: The German Conversations-Lexikon (1796–1808) was just 2,762 pages in six volumes, and while that work was later expanded, its format using numerous, less lengthy entries served as the principal model for many 19th-century encyclopedias and encyclopedic dictionaries. The principal English-language encyclopaedic dictionary of the nineteenth century was the seven-volume in 14 eponymous work by Robert Hunter (1823–1897), published by Cassell in 1879–88, and reprinted many times up to 1910, including (1895) as

60-583: The Present Times ), was a German language encyclopedia published in Leipzig , Germany between 1796 and 1808. The encyclopedia was published in 8 volumes and 2,762 pages. It was edited by Dr Renatus Gotthelf Löbel , who intended to supersede Johann Hübner by including geography, history, biography, mythology, philosophy, natural history, and other topics. Volumes i-iv (A to R) appeared between 1796 and 1800, with vol. v appearing in 1806. This work

72-458: The genre of biographical dictionaries is a "unique product of Arab Muslim culture". The earliest extant example of the biographical dictionary dates from 9th-century Iraq , and by the 16th-century it was a firmly established and well-respected form of historical writing. They contain more social data for a large segment of the population than that found in any other pre-industrial society. The earliest biographical dictionaries initially focused on

84-400: The lives of the prophets of Islam and their companions , with one of the earliest examples being The Book of The Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi , and then began documenting the lives of many other historical figures (from rulers to scholars) who lived in the medieval Islamic world. The largest known biographical dictionary ever produced is called History of Damascus authored by

96-585: The mass-circulation Lloyd's Encyclopaedic Dictionary . Hunter was assisted by zoology author Henry Scherren and a small team of domestic assistants at his house in Loughton. In the US, the dictionary was reissued with a variety of titles. Conversations-Lexikon mit vorz%C3%BCglicher R%C3%BCcksicht auf die gegenw%C3%A4rtigen Zeiten The Conversations-Lexikon mit vorzüglicher Rücksicht auf die gegenwärtigen Zeiten (English: Encyclopaedia with Special Regard to

108-666: The organization of the encyclopedic dictionary to create the early major encyclopedias, the French Encyclopédie and later the British Encyclopædia Britannica . The flourish of encyclopedic dictionaries was mainly because of the pioneering Estienne family in France. However, such comprehensive works were costly and difficult to produce, and to keep current; and the detailed entries were not ideal for some reference uses. The first version of

120-410: The publisher's selection of a title. The encyclopedic dictionary evolved from the dictionary. John Harris subtitled his landmark Lexicon Technicum a "universal English dictionary of Arts and Sciences"; it was the first English-language, alphabetically ordered collection of knowledge. The 18th-century encyclopedists, in turn, dramatically expanded the depth and, in some cases, substantially revised

132-475: The reduced publishing and purchase cost that implies. The question of how to structure the entries, and how much information to include, are among the core issues in organizing reference books. As different approaches are better suited to different uses or users, all three approaches have been in wide use since the end of the 18th century. The title of the volume may not be a good indication of which type of reference it is, as commercial concerns may have affected

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144-535: The term has been used to refer to any encyclopedic reference book (that is, one comprehensive in scope), which was organized alphabetically, as with the familiar dictionary (the term dictionary preceded encyclopedia in common usage by about two centuries). To convey their alphabetic method of organization and to contrast that method with other systems for classifying knowledge, many early encyclopedias were titled or sub-titled "a dictionary of arts and sciences" or something similar. However, it later developed into

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