E. W. Lane? That's kind of old and moldy, but there are better even older lexicons:
al-Khalil ibn Ahmad: the first to compile a general Arabic dictionary, Kitab al'Ain. 8th century. This was the first Arabic lexicon. And it's more than a thousand years older than Lane's
Abu Bakr al-Zubaidi: His was an abridgement and re-arrangement of of Kitab al'Ain. In the tenth century.
al-Khuwarizmi: He was a persian and developed a lexicon for scientific, and technical Arabic before Englih had a proper dictionary. 10th century.
Ibn Faris: He compiled al-Mujmal fi l-lughah this was a 'pocket dictionary so-to speak of common words and phrases - also tenth century.
Ali ibn Sidah: He compiled al-Muhkam wa l-Muhit, this used the phonemic arrangement of Kitab al'Ain. He also compiled al-Mukhassas which was arranged according to topic. 11th century
Mubarak ibn al-Athir compiled al-Nihayah fi Gharib al-Hadith, a dictionary of Prophetic tradition.
Ahmad al-Jawaliqi compiled a dictionary of foreign words, Kitab al-Mu'arrab min al-Kalam. 12th century
Ibn Manzur compiled Lisan al-'Arab this has long been considered the pre-eminent dictionary of classical Arabic it held 80,000 entries. 13th century
Further lexicons and dictionaries were published but they were pretty much derived from the previous works.
In 1960 CE The Arabic Language Academy in Cairo produced al-Mu'jam al-Wasit this follows the traditional arrangement but works very well to handle discrepancies in earlier works in 1960
It's a small world, because one of my professors, Jon Manchip White, wrote the introduction to the 1973 Dover edition of An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians Which, by the way is a much better book on the Arab world than his lexicon.
Scott
