Tesori e cataloghi: organizzare il sapere secondo principi endogeni

This paper compares and contrasts some features of two fundamental surveys of premodern culture: the Chinese Wenxin diaolong (The Literary Mind) by Liu Xie (6th century CE) and the Arabic Kitāb al-fihrist (The Catalogue) by Ibn al-Nadīm (m. 990). Despite having been written centuries apart, these two works respond to a similar need in their respective cultures: organizing and classifying vast amounts of knowledge according to clearly identifiable criteria. Focussing on specific topics covered by both books (the written word, the role of the bureaucrat, the standard curriculum), the paper elaborates on the importance of taking such endogenous criteria into account when studying premodern, and especially non-European, works. It argues against the unquestioning use of labels, such as ‘encyclopaedia,’ which impose a confirmation bias on the analysis, often provoking an artificial discussion on which works such labels can be applied to instead of reading these in their own terms.