NADIM (Abulfaraj Mahommed

See also:

• IBN

ibn Ishaq ibn abi Ya`qub un-Nadim] (d. 995)  , of Bagdad, the author of one of the most interesting works in Arabic literature, the Fihrist ul-' Ulf-1m (" list of the books of all nations that were to be found in Arabic ") with notices of the authors and other particulars, carried down to the year 988 . A note in the Leiden MS. places the death of the author eight years later . Of his life we know. nothing . His work gives us a complete picture of the most active intellectual period of the Arabian empire . He traces the rise and growth of philology and belles-lettres, of theology, orthodox and heretical, of law and history, of mathematics and astronomy, of medicine and alchemy; he does not despise the histories of knights errant, the fables of Kalila and Dimna, the facetiae of the " boon companions," the works of magic and divination . But to us no part of his work is more interesting than his account of the beliefs of sects and peoples beyond Islam . Here, fortunately, still more than in other parts of his work, he goes beyond the functions of the mere cataloguer; he tells what he learned of China from a Christian missionary of Nejran, of India from a description of its religion compiled for the Barmecide Yahya; his full accounts of the Sabians of Harran and of the doctrines of Mani are of the first importance for the historian of Asiatic religions . Imperfect manuscripts of the Fihrist exist in Paris, Leiden and Vienna . The text was prepared for publication by G . Fliigel, and edited after his death by J . Rodiger and A . Muller (2 vols., Leipzig, 1871-1872) .

Flugel had already given a full analysis of the work in the Journal of the German Oriental Society, vol. xiii . (1859), pp . 559-65o; cf . E . G . Browne, A Literary History of Persia (London, 1902), pp . 383-387 . T . Houtsma supplied a lacuna in Flugel's edition in the Vienna Oriental Journal, vol. iv. pp . 217 sqq .