Machine summary:
THE SUBJECTS AND TITLES OF BOOKS WRITTEN DURING THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF ISLAM Literary Heritage S Surah al-Waqi'ah speaks of the Qur'an as a book and other passages mention the revelations as "chapters," it is no wonder that the early companions of the Prophet attached great impor• ·cance to the writing of books.
D. , members of the llustrious Yazidi family wrote extensively about grammar and 'Amr ibn• <Uthman, known as Sibawayh, compiled al-Kitab which so perfectly summed up the grammatical knowledge of the period that al-Mazini was able to say: "If anybody wishes to write a great work on grammar in addition to "The Book" of sibawayh, he should be ashamed of himself.
As just one author of secondary importance like Muhammad ibn-al-Hasan, who was a neighbour of al-Rawandi during the reign of al-Rashid, wrote over sixty-five books, it is evident that all of the subjects of these legal works cannot be mentioned in one article.
It has already been mentioned that some scientific books were written about alchemy during the period of hte banu-al-Umayyah, and that early in the banu-al-'Abbas regime the arrival of ibn-Bakhtyashu' from J undishapur and the work al-Fazari initiated interest in medicine and astronomy, This enthusiasm for the mathematical sciences was stimulated by· Ma-ska' -Allah and the family of al-Nawbakht, as well as by Musa ibn-Shakir and his sons, Muhammad, Ahmad and al-Hasan, who were famous patrons of research and able authors during the first part of the gth Century' A.