His great book, the Fihrist, gives ample testimony to the knowledge of pre-Islamic, Syriac, Greek, Sanskrit, Latin and Persian in classical Islamic civilization. Unfortunately of the Persian books listed by Ibn al-Nadim only a minute sample is extant. According to Fihrist's brief preface, it is meant to be an index of all books written in Arabic, whether by Arabs or others. There existed already books (tabaqat) dealing with the biographies of poets. The Fihrist was published in 938; it exists in two manuscript traditions, or "editions": the more complete edition contains ten "discourses" (maqalat). The first six of them are detailed bibliographies of books on Islamic subjects:
1. the Holy Scriptures of Muslims, Jews, and Christians, with emphasis on the Qur'an and hadith;
2. works on grammar and philology;
3. history, biography, genealogy and the like;
4. poetry;
5. dialectical theology (kalam);
6. law (fiqh) and hadith.
The last four discourses deal with secular subjects:
7. philosophy and the 'secular sciences';
8. legends, fables, magic, conjuring, etc.;
9. the doctrines (maqalat) of other religions (Manicheans, Hindus, Buddhists and Chinese);
10. alchemy.
He gives the titles only of those books which he had seen himself or whose existence was vouchsafed by a trustworthy person.
The shorter edition contains (besides the preface and the first section of the first discourse on the scripts and the different alphabets) 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 (which is the one that is generally printed) was an extension.
Ibn al-Nadim often mentions the size of a book and the number of pages, so that buyers would not be cheated by copyists passing off shorter versions. Compare the Stichometry of Nicephorus. He refers often to copies written 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.
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