Ibn al-Nadim

Ibn al-Nadim was a master bookseller (warraq) and scholar in 10th-century Baghdad who operated at the bustling crossroads of international literature and philosophy. In 987, he completed the monumental Kitab al-Fihrist (The Catalogue), an exhaustive bibliographic index of all books written in or translated into Arabic across theology, philosophy, alchemy, mathematics, literature, and geography.

The Fihrist is an indispensable primary source for the intellectual history of antiquity and the Middle Ages, documenting hundreds of lost classical Greek, Persian, and Sanskrit manuscripts. His encyclopedic dedication saved knowledge of entire literary traditions from complete historical oblivion.