Cataloging the Rescue of Science: Kitab Al-Fihrist

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 holds information about a wide range of scientists and their works, including philosophers, historians, poets, translators, geographers, mathematicians, jurists, musicians, astronomers, and theologians. Over 7,000 publication titles are listed in al-Fihrist, only two percent of which have come down to us today. Al-Fihrist preserves 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. Thus, as a young man, al-Nadim heard 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, written on strips of paper. He finally compiled all of his strips, and, including a list of people who provided him information, produced a whole manuscript of it in 987.

Al-Fihrist was hand-written in the Naskh script in ink and gold on paper made from macerated vegetable matter in Baghdadi mills. Plant-based paper was invented by the Chinese in 105 CE and was obtained by the Islamic civilization after the Battle of Talas in 751, when Chinese paper-makers were among the prisoners of war. The prisoners established mills in Samarkand, and then Khorasan. Two members of the Barmakid clan persuaded the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786-809) to use and make paper in Baghdad at the beginning of the ninth century. Much cheaper than papyrus or parchment or animal skin, plant-based paper spread rapidly into Spain and the rest of Europe. More to the point, the new paper manufacturing process enabled the vast amount of copying and translating and commentary required by the Islamic scholars to bring back the lost sciences.

In addition to paper-makers, the Battle of Talas prisoners of war included Chinese specialists of textile manufacture, gold-working, and pottery-making techniques that led to the invention of Islamic lustreware.

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 foreign scholarly work from Greece, Persia, India, and China. He did not himself travel outside of the Islamic empire, although he spoke to travelers returning from distant lands. Primarily based in Baghdad, al-Nadim 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. That copy's survival involves some of the most significant actors in Muslim intellectual and political society. In the 15th century, this copy was owned by Taqiyy al-Din Ahmad ibn 'Ali al-Maqrizi (1364-1442), 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. I'll give you some of that in Part II.

The Structure

The al-Fihrist contains ten chapters or books, each listing the authors and documents of myriad topics, some full-length tales and stories are collected as well. 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.

Project Takeaways

Without a doubt, al-Fihrist is a document critical to historians and philosophers of Islamic thought on numerous subjects at a time when the Abbasid scholars were reviving lost science. The documents that al-Nadim catalogued were sought out by Iraqi 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 centuries after the lights have gone out. We owe those ancient scholars for their diligence and innovations.

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, Mosul, 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. 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.
• Hannawi, Abdul Ahad. "The Role of the Arabs in the Introduction of Paper into Europe." MELA Notes, no. 85, 2012, pp. 14–29, JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23392489
• Ibn al-Nadim, Muhammad ibn Ishaq. "Kitab Al-Fihrist, Volume 1." The Fihrist of al-Nadim, edited and 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 and 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

This article is part of the Staring into Space project.
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