[1] Ibn Tunart wrote a sort of Arab-Berber lexicon or dictionary known as Kitāb al-asmā’ (the book of names).
[1] There are only copies of this work, found in the Berber-speaking area of the Chleuh variant (in Morocco), the oldest is dated 956 H./1549 (under the shelfmark ms. Or 23.333 in Leiden).
[2] The observation is that the lexicon of the manuscript belongs mainly to Chleuh, spoken in the southwest of Morocco.
However, we find terms belonging to other varieties and sometimes specific to a particular area or even restricted to particular dialects in Algeria: The manuscript contains terms that no longer seem to be alive in current dialects such as asarn = prophets; imrran = husbands (according to Naït-Zerrad 2003: 40).
[3] Ibn Tunart's dictionary was also compiled in 1145, either before the conquest of its region by the Almohads, which makes it more likely that this dictionary was recovered and altered by Chleuh speakers in more recent times, given the four available copies of this text, which are several centuries later than the original work.