Letter Sort Order in Arabic Dictionaries

In the original printings of Lisan Al-Arab, words were ordered by the last letter of their triliteral root. The contemporary standard is to sort by the first letter and modern printings of the Lisan follow suit.

It is fairly well known that Arabic words with similar letters often have related meanings. While studying Tafseer Ghareeb Al-Qur'an Al-3adheem by Zayn Al-Deen (not Fakhr Al-Deen) Al-Razi, which sorts by the last letter of the root, I noticed that dictionary entries close to each other had related meanings, so much so that I began to wonder if this was the incentive of sorting the words in this manner in the first place. Being mostly illiterate, the Pre-Islamic Arabs depended on memorization in place of writing, and poets (who sang their compositions) were regarded very highly. Given that Arabic inflection is highly consistent, one could make things rhyme much more easily if the word for what one wanted to talk about ended in the same letter as the word one already had at hand.