Books about Books: Kitab al-Fihrist

 One of my favorite books is actually a book about books. Specifically, it is a book about books written in the Arabic language. This book is called "Kitab al-Fihrist" or simply "the Fihrist" meaning "the Index". The author was  Abu'l-Faraj Muhammad bin Is'hāq al-Nadim, a Shia Muslim who lived in 10th century Baghdad. The Fihrist is, the author's own words,

 "an Index of the books of all nations, Arabs and non-Arabs alike, which are extant in the Arabic language and script, on every branch of knowledge; comprising information as to their compilers and the classes of their authors, together with the genealogies of those persons, the dates of their birth, the length of their lives, the times of their death, the places to which they belonged, their merits and their faults, since the beginning or every science that has been invented down to the present epoch: namely, the year 377 of the Hijra."

 Today it provides a wealth of information about Arabic authors and their works. Anyone who does research in Arabic or Islamic studies will be very familiar with this book. Al-Nadim was a bookseller and manuscript copyist. In his time, much care was taken to produce manuscript copies which were approved by the author or by a respectable scholar. Books were very expensive and one did not want to purchase an unauthorized copy or a forgery because of the possibility of errors. The Fihrist gives detailed descriptions of some books, even to their physical appearance, ie. type of paper, binding, ink, and other minute details. This makes it possible for the 10th century book shopper to make a wise purchase. 

 The book was arranged chronologically and thematically into ten discourses (maqālāt), each subdivided into several sections:

(1) on the revealed Scriptures of Muslims, Jews and Christians, with an emphasis on the Koran and Koranic sciences; (2) on Arabic grammarians and philologists; (3) on historians, biographers, epistolographers, and genealogists; (4) on poetry and poets; (5) on theology and Muslim sects; (6) on jurisprudence (feqh), legal authorities, and hadith; (7) on philosophy, logic, mathematics, astronomy and medicine; (8) on legends, fables, charms, conjuring, magic, sorcery, talismans and the like; (9) on the doctrines of the non-monotheistic religions (Sabians, Manicheans, Mazdakites and other dualists) and the creeds of India, China, and other countries; and (10) on alchemy. (Encyclopedia Iranica)

 In current the English translation, this treasure amounts to 1252 pages. 

 In the Borges' story, "The Garden of Forking Paths", an illustrious Chinese ancestor wrote a book which was in fact a labyrinth. The Fihrist is a bibliographic labyrinth into which the interested reader may wander for hours or even years.

Kitab al-Fihrist