Ibn al-Nadim


Abū al-Faraj Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Nadīm[William McGuckin de Slane|], also ibn Abī Ya'qūb Isḥāq ibn Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Warrāq, and erroneously but commonly known in Arabic by the nasab Ibn al-Nadīm was a 10th-century Arab Muslim bibliographer and biographer of Baghdad who compiled the bibliographic-biographic encyclopedia Kitāb al-Fihrist.

Biography

Much known of al-Nadim is deduced from his epithets. 'Al-Nadim', 'the Court Companion' and 'al-Warrāq 'the copyist of manuscripts'. Probably born in Baghdad ca. 320/932 he died there on Wednesday, 20th of Shaʿban A.H. 380. He was Arab perhaps of Persian origin.
From age six he would have attended a madrasa and received a quality comprehensive education in Islamic studies, history, geography, comparative religion, the sciences, grammar, rhetoric and Qurʾanic commentary. Ibrahim al-Abyari, author of Turāth al-Insaniyah says al-Nadim studied with al-Hasan ibn Sawwar, a logician and translator of science books; Yunus al-Qass, translator of classical mathematical texts; and Abu al-Hasan Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Naqit, scholar in Greek science.
An inscription, in an early copy of al-Fihrist, probably by the historian al-Maqrizi, relates that al-Nadim was a pupil of the jurist Abu Sa'id al-Sirafi, the poet Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, and the historian Abu Abdullah al-Marzubani and others. Al-Maqrizi's phrase 'but no one quoted him', would imply al-Nadim himself did not teach. While attending lectures of some of the leading scholars of the tenth century, he served an apprenticeship in his father's profession, the book trade. His father, a bookdealer and owner of a prosperous bookstore, commissioned al-Nadim to buy manuscripts from dealers. Al-Nadim, with the other calligrapher scribes employed, would then copy these for the customers. The bookshop, customarily on an upper floor, would have been a popular hangout for intellectuals.
He probably visited the intellectual centers at Basra and Kufa in search of scholarly material. He may have visited Aleppo, a center of literature and culture under the rule of Sayf al-Dawla. In a library in Mosul he found a fragment of a book by Euclid and works of poetry. Al-Nadim may have served as 'Court Companion' to Nasir al-Dawla, a Hamdanid ruler of Mosul who promoted learning. His family were highly educated and he, or his ancestor, may have been a 'member of the Round Table of the prince'. The Buyid caliph 'Adud al-Dawla, was the great friend of arts and sciences, loved poets and scholars, gave them salaries, and founded a significant library. More probably service at the court of Mu'izz al-Dawla, and later his son Izz al-Dawlah's, in Baghdad, earned him the title. He mentions meeting someone in Dar al-Rum in 988, about the period of the book's compilation. However, it is probable that, here, 'Dar al-Rum' refers to the Greek Orthodox sector of Baghdad rather than Constantinople.
Others among his wide circle of elites were Ali ibn Harun ibn al-Munajjim, of the Banu Munajjim and the Christian philosopher Ibn al-Khammar. He admired Abu Sulayman Sijistani, son of Ali bin Isa the "Good Vizier" of the Banu al-Jarrah, for his knowledge of philosophy, logic and the Greek, Persian and Indian sciences, especially Aristotle. The physician Ibn Abi Usaibia, mentions al-Nadim thirteen times and calls him a writer, or perhaps a government secretary. Al-Nadim's kunya 'Abu al-Faraj' indicates he was married with at least one son.
In 987, Ibn al-Nadim began compiling al-Fihrist, as a useful reference index for customers and traders of books. Over a long period he noted thousands of authors, their biographical data, and works, gathered from his regular visits to private book collectors and libraries across the region - including Mosul and Damascus - and through active participation in the lively literary scene of Baghdad in the period.

Religion

Ishaq al-Nadim's broad discussions of religions and religious sects in his writings and the subtleties of his descriptions and terminologies raised questions as to his own religious beliefs and affiliations. It seems Ibn Hajar's claim that al-Nadim was Shiʿah, was based on his use of the term specific people for the Shiʿah, general people for non-Shiʿahs, and of the pejorative term Ḥashawīyya, for Sunnis. Reinforcing this suspicion are references to the Hanbali school as Ahl al-Hadith, and not Ahl al-Sunna, use of the supplication of peace be upon him after the names of the Ahl al-Bayt and reference to the Shia imam Ali ar-Rida as mawlana. He alleges that al-Waqidi concealed being a Shiʿah by taqiyya and that most of the traditionalists were Zaydis. Ibn Hajar also claimed al-Nadim was a Muʿtazila. The sect is discussed in chapter five of Al-Fihrist where they are called the People of Justice. Al-Nadim calls the Ash'arites al-Mujbira, and harshly criticises the Sab'iyya doctrine and history. An allusion to a certain Shafi'i scholar as a 'secret Twelver', is said to indicate his possible Twelver affiliation. Within his circle were the theologian Al-Mufid, the da'i Ibn Hamdan, the author Khushkunanadh, and the Jacobite philosopher Yahya ibn 'Adi preceptor to Isa bin Ali and a fellow copyist and bookseller. Another unsubstantiated claim that al-Nadim was Isma'ili, rests on his meeting with an Isma'ili leader.

''Al-Fihrist''

The Kitāb al-Fihrist is a compendium of the knowledge and literature of tenth-century Islam referencing approx. 10,000 books and 2,000 authors. This crucial source of medieval Arabic-Islamic literature, informed by various ancient Hellenic and Roman civilizations, preserves from his own hand the names of authors, books and accounts otherwise entirely lost. Al-Fihrist is evidence of Al-Nadim's thirst for knowledge among the exciting sophisticated milieu of Baghdad's intellectual elite. As a record of civilisation transmitted through Muslim culture to the West world, it provides unique classical material and links to other civilisations.
The Fihrist indexes authors, together with biographical details and literary criticism. Al-Nadim's interest ranges from religions, customs, sciences, with obscure facets of medieval Islamic history, works on superstition, magic, drama, poetry, satire and music from Persia, Babylonia, and Byzantium. The mundane, the bizarre, the prosaic and the profane. Al-Nadim freely selected and catalogued the rich culture of his time from various collections and libraries.
The order is primarily chronological and works are listed according to four internal orders: genre; orfann ; maqala ; the Fihrist. These four chronological principles of its underlying system help researchers to interpret the work, retrieve elusive information and understand Ibn al-Nadim's method of composition, ideology, and historical analyses.
The Fihrist shows the wealth, range and breadth of historical and geographical knowledge disseminated in the literature of the Islamic Golden Age, from the modern to the ancient civilisations of Syria, Greece, India, Rome and Persia. Little survives of the Persian books listed by Ibn al-Nadim.
The author's aim, set out in his preface, is to index all books in Arabic, written by Arabs and others, as well as their scripts, dealing with various sciences, with accounts of those who composed them and the categories of their authors, together with their relationships, their times of birth, length of life, and times of death, the localities of their cities, their virtues and faults, from the beginning of the formation of science to this our own time. An index as a literary form had existed as tabaqat biographies. Contemporaneously in the western part of the empire in the Umayyad seat of Córdoba, the Andalusian scholar Abū Bakr al-Zubaydī, produced Ṭabaqāt al-Naḥwīyīn wa-al-Lughawīyīn a biographic encyclopedia of early Arab philologists of the Basran, Kufan and Baghdad schools of Arabic grammar and tafsir, which covers much of the same material covered in chapter II of Al-Fihrist.

Editions and chapters

Al-Fihrist published in 987, exists in two manuscript traditions, or "editions": the more complete edition contains ten maqalat. The first six are detailed bibliographies of books on Islamic subjects:
*
Al-Nadim claims he has seen every work listed or relies upon creditable sources.
The shorter edition contains only the last four discourses, in other words, the Arabic translations from Greek, Syriac and other languages, together with Arabic books composed on the model of these translations. Perhaps it was the first draft and the longer edition was an extension.
Ibn al-Nadim often mentions the size and number of pages of a book, to avoid copyists cheating buyers by passing off shorter versions. Cf. Stichometry of Nicephorus. He refers to copies by famous calligraphers, to bibliophiles and libraries, and speaks of a book auction and of the trade in books. In the opening section, he deals with the alphabets of 14 peoples and their manner of writing and also with the writing-pen, paper and its different varieties. His discourses contain sections on the origins of philosophy, on the lives of Plato and Aristotle, the origin of One Thousand and One Nights, thoughts on the pyramids, his opinions on magic, sorcery, superstition, and alchemy etc.
The chapter devoted to what the author rather dismissively calls "bed-time stories" and "fables" contains a large amount of Persian material.
In the chapter on anonymous works of assorted content there is a section on "Persian, Indian, Byzantine, and Arab books on sexual intercourse in the form of titillating stories", but the Persian works are not separated from the others; the list includes a "Book of Bahrām-doḵt on intercourse." This is followed by books of Persians, Indians, etc. on fortune-telling, books of "all nations" on horsemanship and the arts of war, then on horse doctoring and on falconry, some of them specifically attributed to the Persians. Then we have books of wisdom and admonition by the Persians and others, including many examples of Persian andarz literature, e.g. various books attributed to Persian emperors Khosrau I, Ardashir I, etc.

Manuscripts

Gustav Flügel
de Slane’s use in Paris
Bayard Dodge