Characteristics of bibliographic composition among Muslims: Fahrasat Ibn Khair al-Ishbili as an example

This study aimed at introducing Fahrasat Ibn Khair al-Ishbili, explain the bibliographic characteristics that distinguish it, and study Quantitative and qualitative trends in intellectual production and authors’ productivity based on the inventory carried out by Ibn Khair al-Ishbili. To achieve the objectives of the study, three approaches were used: historical , descriptive , and bibliographic method.
The findings of the study showed that Fahrasat Ibn Khair was primarily a bibliographic work, as it was more concerned with monitoring the works than with the biographies of scholars. The bibliographic sense was clear in Ibn Khair, as he was keen to provide an accurate description of the books as much as possible, in addition to recording the narrators for each book leading to the author; it is an original bibliographic effort that is comparable in our current era to the citation index
Ibn Khair succeeded in achieving his goal. He was able to collect the culture of the Orient and Andalusia in one book.
The books total in Fahrasat Ibn Khair was (1333 books), and the authors was (575 authors), Authors distributed according to their productivity into three categories: The first : highly productive people who have written ten or more books, led by Al-Hafiz Ibn Abi Al-Dunya who has 33 books. The second : authors with moderate productivity whose production ranges between (4-9) books. The third : highly productive authors. Their production ranges between one and three books.