Ibn al-Nadim

Who was Ibn al-Nadim?

Abu'l-Faraj Muhammad bin Is'hāq al-Nadim was a Muslim scholar and bibliographer. He is famous as the author of the Kitāb al-Fihrist. It is, in his 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.". His choice of the rather rare Persian word pehrest for the title of a handbook on Arabic literature is noteworthy in this regard.