The Medieval Church · 987
The Catalogue
Al-Fihrist
Ibn al-Nadim · d. c. 995
What it is
A Baghdad bookseller's index of every book he knew to exist in Arabic, with notes on the authors. It covers scriptures and sects at length — Christians, Jews, Sabians, Manichaeans — and lists the titles of Mani's own writings one by one.
Why it lasted
The single most important bibliography from the medieval world, and the main reason anyone knows what Mani wrote. Several works in this catalogue are known to have existed only because a bookseller in Baghdad wrote their names down.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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