كتاب الأغاني

"Kitab al-Aghani" (The Book of Songs) by Abu al-Faraj Ali ibn al-Husayn al-Isfahani. Hajji Khalifa describes it as a book the like of which was never written by chance. ²

Hajji Khalifa reports that Abu Muhammad al-Muhallabi asked the author how long he had taken to gather it. He said he had gathered it over fifty years, that he had written it out once in his lifetime in his own hand, and that he presented it to Sayf al-Dawla, who sent him a thousand dinars. ²

He also reports that al-Sahib ibn Abbad, on hearing this, said that Sayf al-Dawla had been stingy, and that the book deserved many times that sum. He said that his library held a hundred and seventeen thousand volumes, and that among them there was nothing like this book for him. ²

He mentions that Adud al-Dawla never left it while travelling or at home, and that its draft was sold in the Baghdad market for four thousand dirhams. He cites Ibn Khallikan as saying that Ibn Abbad used to carry thirty camel-loads of books on literature on his journeys, and that once this book reached him he took no other with him. ²