Yūsuf al-Maġribi (
Arabic: يوسف المغربي) was a 17th-century
traveler and
lexicographer active in
Cairo. He is the first author to treat
Egyptian Arabic as a dialect distinct from
Classical Arabic, compiling an Egyptian Arabic word list, the Raf` al-'iṣr `an kalām 'ahl miṣr (i.e. "apology of the Egyptian vernacular", literally "the lifting of the burden from the speech of the population of Egypt"), which survives in a unique manuscript kept at
St. Petersburg State University.
Al-Maghribi's dictionary reflects a wider trend in early 17th century
Ottoman Egypt towards colloquial writing.
Edition
Abdul-Salam Ahmad Awwad, Raf` al-Isar `an kalam ahl misr, Moscow (1968).
References
Elisabeth Zack. Yusuf al-Maghribi's Egyptian-Arabic Word List. A Unique Manuscript in the St. Petersburg State University Library, Manuscripta orientalia (
ISSN1238-5018 ) 2001, vol. 7, no3, pp. 46–49.
Society and Economy in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean, 1600–1900, American Univ in Cairo Press (2005), p. 34.
Paula Sanders, Creating Medieval Cairo, American Univ in Cairo Press (2007), p. 99
Nelly Hanna, In Praise of Books: A Cultural History of Cairo's Middle Class, Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century, Syracuse University Press (2003),
ISBN978-0-8156-3012-8, chapter 5.