Language science meets History of Science in this cloudburst of a book, which glosses all the names for thunder, lightning, rainfall, groundwater, and every type of cloud as gathered by one of the greatest early scholars of Arabic, Abu Zayd al-Ansari. With poetry for its primary source, the book functions secondarily as an anthology of classical Arabic poetry on the subject of weather, though it belongs to the genre of lexicography, before alphabetically-ordered dictionaries became that genre's default form. This translation was painstakingly edited from the unique manuscript held in Paris at the Bibliothèque nationale, with an appendix On the names of the wind by Ibn Khalawayh, and notes and introduction by
the translator. Forthcoming in October 2025 from Wave Books.