These excerpts from Ibn al-Nadīm’sindex of Arabic books list two books that the Sāmānid prince Ismāʿīl, who was described as learned and pious, committed to memory shortly after beginning his education in adab: Ibn Qutayba’s Adab al-kātiband Abū ʿUbayd’s Gharīb al-ḥadīth. In her analysis of Islamic mirrors-for-princes literature on judging in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Louise Marlow points to Ismāʿīl as an example of a “semiprofessional” religious scholar.
This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, ed. Intisar A. Rabb and Abigail Krasner Balbale(ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of primary sources and other material used in and related to the book.