Munir Baalbaki and Dr. Rohi Baalbaki (Author)

1. Very Useful To Learners of Arabic

By J. E. S. Leake

The Mawrid Arabic-English is a good, complete dictionary, perhaps - no, certainly - the best published in the Middle East. It works in alphabetical order, which is good for the beginner as well as for the intermediate learner who's searched through a root-order dictionary without success for a word. The major flaw with this book is that it's aimed at Arab readers and as a result, simple grammatical information like broken plurals or masdars is not shown with the base noun or verb. Learners of Arabic will find the root-order Wehr more useful, but if they can afford two, buy this too, especially as Wehr hasn't been updated in over 25 years while the Mawrid is frequently updated. (I own both.)

The Mawrid English-Arabic dictionary is perhaps the best available because, though the Oxford English-Arabic Dictionary of Current Usage is more useful to learners of Arabic for reasons of Arabic grammatical content, the Oxford is 40 years old and the language had expanded significantly. Again, buy both, but here the Mawrid English-Arabic would be my first choice (you can always use Hans Wehr to look up the grammatical info).

2. Al-Mawrid Qaamus

By Haseeb

A few years ago, a brother at a masjid gave this dictionary to me as a gift. Before that, the Hans Wehr dictionary was all I had to go on. Since this dictionary isn't based on the three consonant root system, there is no need to know the root of an arabic word before looking it up. There have been quite a few words which I could not find in my Hans Wehr because I simply didn't know the root. I use this dictionary to look up words when I don't know the root. Once a word is found, I can easily find the root by looking at the arabic definition and similar words provided. Knowing the root enables me to use my Hans Wehr in order to find the verb forms, examples of usage, and more elaborate definitions in english.
This dictionary doesn't give the verb forms and the definitions are not that detailed because examples of word usage is nonexistent. The book is also too large and a real pain in the neck to carry around. It's good for looking up words quickly and finding roots, but for more serious study of arabic there is no substitute for the Hans Wehr dictionary of modern written arabic.