Putting the House of Wisdom in Order: the fourth Islamic century and the impulse to classify, arrange and inventory

The fourth Islamic century/tenth century CE witnessed a proliferation of texts concerned with organizing and making accessible both the scientific and literary production of early Arabic-Islamic scholarship and that of the pre-Islamic societies whose intellectual heritage had entered its purview. A group of researchers working on various topics in the intellectual history of the fourth century were brought together in Zurich in February 2016 for a workshop entitled Putting the House of Wisdom in Order: the fourth Islamic century and the impulse to classify, arrange and inventory. We also profited from the expertise of renowned specialists in the cultural history of China and Early Modern Europe, Alessandra Lavagnino and Peter Burke, who helped us identify common questions and participated actively in the workshop. The conversations at the workshop were varied and fruitful and, as was to be expected, yielded more questions than answers. The papers in the present volume of Asiatische Studien – Études Asiatiques represent a selection of those delivered at the workshop and reflect that variety, whilst also highlighting a range of themes that emerged repeatedly.