Al-Fihrist
composition: secureauthorship: secure
A bookseller catalogues everything available in Arabic, with authors, contents and often what he has personally seen, producing the fullest picture of a lost library.
- a working bookseller's catalogue rather than a scholar's ideal library
- personal inspection of copies noted where it occurred
- the main evidence for a large body of now-lost literature
- non-Muslim traditions catalogued alongside Islamic sciences
The Fihrist lists works on scripts and scripture, grammar, history, poetry, theology, law, philosophy, science, alchemy and the beliefs of non-Muslim peoples, with biographical notes on authors. Ibn al-Nadim frequently states whether he handled a copy himself and how large it was. Because so much of what he lists is lost, the catalogue is a principal source for what tenth-century Baghdad actually contained, including translated Greek works whose Arabic versions have not survived.
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