Cataloging the Rescue of Science: Kitab Al-Fihrist

Illustration and title page of the 990 CE copy of Al-Fihrist, signed by the Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi and preserved as MS3315 in the Chester Beatty Online Collections. Image credit: Chester Beatty, Dublin, CC BY 4.0.

The Kitab al-Fihrist ("Index" in Arabic) is the name of a 1,000-year-old book that began as a catalog for an Iraqi bookshop and evolved into a bibliographic and biographic encyclopedia of the start of the Golden Age of the Islamic civilization. This astonishing text documented the people, processes, and inspirations of the Abbasid era between about 750-900 CE. The al-Fihrist lists a wide range of scientists and their works, including philosophers, historians, poets, translators, geographers, mathematicians, jurists, musicians, astronomers, and theologians. Over 7,000 titles are listed in al-Fihrist, but only two percent of them have come down to us today, and so al-Fihrist contains fascinating and frustrating glimpses into the revival of science in the Middle East and Mediterranean worlds and beyond.

The compiler of this immense project was Abu al-Faraj Muhammad ibn Abi Ya'qub Ishaq al-Nadim (ca 935-990 CE), referred to as simply al-Nadim, a familiar name meaning "court companion," or ibn al Nadim ("son of court companion"). It's a bit complicated (1). Al-Nadim was born about 935 CE, perhaps in Mosul — see complication (2) — and his father was a book dealer. Book shops were meeting places, rather like a coffee house where scholars came to examine books, enjoy refreshments, and discuss academic issues while waiting for their copies to be readied. Thus, as a young man, al-Nadim was able to attend lectures and classes from some of the leading scholars of the day, providing him with an unusually extensive education. He began his catalog to help customers and procure manuscripts, but he continued taking notes throughout his career in Baghdad. He finally compiled all of the data, including a list of people who provided him information, after his retirement from court about 987.

A Stellar Source

During the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries, the Abbasid capital of Baghdad was the scientific center of the world, especially in mathematics and astronomy, and the language of science was Arabic. Al-Nadim's work provides an expansive overview of diverse fields of knowledge: language, grammar, history and literary pursuits, poetry, theology, the law, philosophy, stories and fables, sects and doctrines, and alchemy and alchemists. In addition to the work of scholars from the Muslim world, al-Nadim included listings for translated scholarly work from Greece, Persia, India, and China. Primarily based in Baghdad, al-Nadim also spent time in Mosul between 929-987, and frequently visited Basra and Kufa, and perhaps Aleppo as well.

Although the original book has long since disappeared, copies of the al-Fihrist were made and distributed almost immediately upon its original publication in 987. The best surviving copy was made before al-Nadim's death in 990, and it was copied from the original. It's survival involves some of the most significant actors in Muslim intellectual and political society. In the 15th century, this copy was owned by al-Maqrizi (d. 1442), a leading Egyptian medieval historian and biographer, who signed the copy and dated it 1423 CE. Four hundred years later, the copy was in the library of the great mosque built by the Ottoman commander Ahmed Pasha al-Jazzar (1722-1804) in Acre. After al-Jazzar's death, the book was stolen, and the thieves broke it into two parts. (3) The first half was sold to Irish historian and collector Sir Chester Beatty (1875-1968), and it is currently stored in his archive in Dublin; the second half made its way to the Sulaymaniyah mosque library in Istanbul.

Al-Fihrist was translated into English in 1969-1970 by Bayard Dodge (1888-1972), a United States scholar of Islam and the president of the American University in Beirut. While not a perfect translation (according to modern scholars), the English-language translation is free to access at the Internet Archive, and it is great fun to dip into.

The Structure

The al-Fihrist contains ten books, each listing the authors and documents of myriad topics. The following summary is adapted from U.S. Arabic and Islamic professor Devin Stewart:

• Book 1 lists scripts active in the world as al-Nadim knew them: Arabic, Syriac, Persian, Hebrew, Greek, Lombard and Saxon, Chinese, Manichaean, Soghdian, Indian (he was told there were about 200 of them), African (Ethiopian and Beja), Turkish, Russian, Latin, and Armenian.
• Books 2-4 are devoted to the Arabic sciences, specifically those not borrowed from other cultures.
• Books 5 and 6 include Islamic religious sciences including theology and law.
• Books 7-10 are devoted to the science of foreign origin, mainly Greek, Persian, and Indian, translated into Arabic from Greek, Syriac, Persian, and Sanskrit.

There are numerous tasty tidbits in al-Fihrist that make it worth dipping into. For archaeology nerds, in Book 10 (alchemy and alchemists), there is a description of investigations led by an Egyptian official around and into an Egyptian pyramid, most likely Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza. Among the folk tales included in Book 10 are early versions of the Scheherazade and Sinbad tales. The Banu Musa appear with some regularity: they were three 9th century Persian brothers who played a major role in translating Greek scientific works. Different members of the Barmakid family from Persia appear, as viziers and scholars in Baghdad. There is considerable discussion of the difficulties of translating Ptolemy's Almagest, and there's a account of a visiting Chinese scholar who recorded all the books of the Greek physician Galen (129-200 CE) in shorthand while the Persian physician Abu Bakr al-Razi (865-925 CE) and one of his students dictated. And there is an account of the Abbasid ruler al-Ma'mun's dream in which he met and talked to Aristotle, said to have stirred his imagination to amass more and more lost science.

Women in Islamic Science

Among the scientists listed in al-Fihrist is the astrolabe-maker known as Maryam al-Astralubi. Out of sheer nosiness, I somewhat haphazardly searched for other women in al-Fihrist's entries and found a handful of names. Of most interest is Ibn Abi Fatimah (Vol 1:12), the youngest daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, who is listed as a transcriber of the Q'uran. Others included Thana, a woman scribe and the slave of ibn-Qayyuma who himself is listed as a pupil of Ishaq ibn Hammad, one of the transcribers at the founding of the Abbasid Caliphate (Vol 1:12). Three other women were listed as tribal scholars involved in the collection of legends and colloquialisms: Ghaniyah Umm al-Humaris, a scholar of Bedouin dialects; Ghaythah Umm al-Hytham, a language scholar of tribal origin; and Qaribah Umm al-Buhlol, a scholar of tribal origin from the Banu Asad, who studied dialects and language (Vol 1:103). One more woman is the Indian scholar Rusa (Rusha), who wrote a book on the medical treatment of women (Vol 2: 710). There are fourteen female poets, as well as singers and musicians. I may have missed others (somebody who reads Arabic would do much better than I did).

Astronomy and Astrology

The Staring into Space project is dedicated to the pursuit of astronomical/astrological science, so I chose to focus on those chapters as an example. Only the authors and titles of their works are listed, but they're intriguing, and one of the most listed was al-Kindi (d. 870), "The Philosopher of the Arabs," a prolific polymath who wrote books on logic, philosophy, geometry, calculation, arithmetic, music, astronomy, and many other things (and, according to al-Nadim, he was miserly).

A few of al-Kindi's astronomical and cosmological treatises listed in al-Fihrist (some I would love to read if they had survived) are:

• The visibility of the new moon cannot be determined accurately, a statement about it being approximate
• Questions which are asked about the states of the stars
• An explanation of the cause of the retrogression of the stars
• The speed appearing with the movement of the stars, when on the horizon, and their slowness after they have risen
• The causes for the positions (settings) of the stars
• The most remote world (extreme universe)
• Explanations of the Book of Euclid
• Ptolemy's art of cosmology
• Essence of the celestial and the inherent azure color perceived in the direction of the heavens
• The relativity of time
• The great atmospheric phenomenon in 222 AH (836-837 CE)
• The comet that appeared and was observed for some days until it faded out

Scholars have identified those last two entries as referring to an early sighting of Halley's comet, and Iranian scholar Hamid-Reza Giahi Yazdi (2014) found what appears to be an Arabic commentary on Aristotle's discussion of comets, including a summary of al-Kindi's treatise.

Project Takeaways

Without a doubt, al-Fihrist is a critical document to historians and philosophers of Islamic thought. The documents that al-Nadim catalogued were sought out by Abbasid leaders who wrote letters and sent emissaries to friends in Alexandria and enemies in Constantinople, wherever the ancient manuscripts might have been stored. The obtained manuscripts were copied, then translated, then discussed in depth, ultimately advancing the sciences into new realms. For those of us who are not Islamic scholars, the al-Fihrist is a tantalizing glimpse into how it is possible to re-animate science after the lights have gone out.

The English language al-Fihrist created by Bayard Dodge is free to read on line at the Internet Archive (vol 1, vol 2); and German scholar Hans Wellisch's 1986 extensive and accessible report on the making of al-Fihrist and a biography of al-Nadim is also free to download and read.

Complications

A complication is what I'm calling a footnote; not really necessary to the project, but interesting.

1. Arabic names can include information about a person's family and a person's profession. "Nadim" is a "laqab," a personal name indicating that the bearer was an important courtier for an amir; alternatively, ibn Nadim indicates that the individual was the son of a courtier. It's a point of contention among scholars whether the writer of al-Fihrist was a courtier or not; I chose al-Nadim arbitrarily. See Wellisch 1986 and Stewart 2014 for opposing camps.
2. Another point of contention is whether al-Nadim spent his youth in Baghdad working in his father's workshop, or grew up in Mosul and moved to Baghdad (maybe by himself) by mid-century. See Wellisch 1986 and Stewart 2014.
3. There were several pages missing from the al-Fihrist when Bayard Dodge did his translation, but he was able to obtain copies of the missing pages from other repositories.

Figure Credits

1. Illustration and title page of the 990 CE copy of Al-Fihrist. Chester Beatty, Dublin, CC BY 4.0. https://viewer.cbl.ie/viewer/image/Ar_3315/13/LOG_0003/
2. Stereo pair of men smoking water pipes in a coffee house in 1914, Mosel, Iraq. Image credit: U.S. Library of Congress. Underwood and Underwood, reproduction number LC-DIG-stereo-1s27233 (digital file from original) LC-USZ62-92661 (b&w film copy neg.). Public domain. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/stereo.1s27233
3. Drawing of the constellation Pegasus from 1010 copy of Al-Sufi's Book of the Fixed Stars. Bodleian Library at Oxford. CC BY- 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Auv0164_pegasus.jpg https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/c1caa84c-f6d2-483f-9eb4-2439cccdc801/
4. Drawing of the constellation Cassiopeia from 1010 copy of Al-Sufi's Book of the Fixed Stars. Bodleian Library at Oxford. CC BY- 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Book_of_the_Fixed_Stars_Auv0109_cassiopeia.jpg https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/c1caa84c-f6d2-483f-9eb4-2439cccdc801/
5. Halley's Comet, March 21, 1986. Image from the European Southern Observatory. CC BY 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comethalley-21mar1986.jpg
6. 10th century luster ware bowl, Iraq. The Keir Collection of Islamic Art on loan to the Dallas Museum of Art K.1.2014.233. CC0 1.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bowl_with_cavalryman.jpg

Sources

• Aljoumani, Said et al. List of Identified al-Jazzar Manuscripts and Their Current Location. 2024: Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg. https://doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.14178
• Aljoumani, Said et al., editors. The Library of Aḥmad Pasha Al-Jazzār, vol. 219. Brill, 2025.
• Ibn al-Nadim, Muhammad ibn Ishaq. "Kitab Al-Fihrist, Volume 1." The Fihrist of al-Nadim, edited by Bayard Dodge, translated by Bayard Dodge, vol. 1, Columbia University Press, 987. https://archive.org/details/fihristofalnadim0000unse/
• Ibn al-Nadim, Muhammad ibn Ishaq "Kitab Al-Fihrist, Volume 2." The Fihrist of al-Nadim, edited by Bayard Dodge, translated by Bayard Dodge, vol. 2, Columbia University Press, 1970 987. The Fihrist of al-Nadim; a tenth-century survey of Muslim culture, https://archive.org/details/fihristofalnadim0000ibna/
• Mahmoud, Ramy. "Al-Nadim’s (385/995) Approach to Islamic Sects through His Monograph “Al-Fihrist”." Aqwal: Journal of Qur'an and Hadis Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 2024, pp. 192–206, doi:10.28918/aqwal.v5i2.8685
• Osti, Letizia. "Authors, Subjects and Fame in the Kitab Al-Fihrist of Ibn Al-Nadim: The Case of Al-Tabari Adn Al-Suli." Annali di ca' Foscari, vol. 38, no. 3, 1999, pp. 155–70.
• Stewart, Devin. "Abu ’1-Faraj Muhammad Ibn Ishaq Ibn Al-Nadim (D. 990)." Essays in Arabic Literary Biography 925-1350, edited by Terri DeYoung and Mary St. Germain, Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011, pp. 129–42.
• ---. "The Structure of the Fihrist : Ibn Al-Nadim as Historian of Islamic Legal and Theological Schools." International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 39, no. 3, 2007, pp. 369–87, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020743807070511
• Stewart, Devin J. "Editing the Fihrist of Ibn Al-Nadīm." Journal of Abbasid Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014, pp. 159–205, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/22142371-12340010
• Thomann, Johannes. "The Second Revival of Astronomy in the Tenth Century and the Establishment of Astronomy as an Element of Encyclopedic Education." Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques, vol. 71, no. 3, 2017, pp. 907–57, doi: https://doi-org.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/10.1515/asia-2017-0052
• Toorawa, Shawkat M. "Proximity, Resemblance, Sidebars and Clusters: Ibn Al-Nadīm’s Organizational Principles in Fihrist 3.3." Oriens, vol. 38, no. 1, 2010, pp. 217–47, doi:10.1163/187783710X536725.
• Wellisch, Hans H. "The First Arab Bibliography: Fihrist Al-'Ulum." Occasional Papers, vol. 175, The University of Illinois, 1986. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED278419
• Yazdi, Hamid-Reza Giahi. "The Fragment of Al-Kindī's Lost Treatise on Observations of Halley's Comet in A.D. 837." Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol. 45, no. 1, 2014, pp. 61–77, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002182861404500104

This article is part of the Staring into Space project.
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