Al-ʿIqd al-Farīd

al-ʿIqd al-Farīd (The Unique Necklace, Arabic: العقد الفريد‎‎) is an anthology attempting to encompass 'all that a well-informed person had to know in order to pass in society as a cultured and refined individual' (or adab), composed by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (860–940), a Moorish writer and poet associated with Cordova, now in Spain.

The anthology is divided into 25 sections. The 13th section is named the middle jewel of the necklace, and the chapters on either side are named after other jewels. It is an adab book resembling Ibn Qutaybah's `Uyun al-akhbar (The Fountains of Story) and the writings of al-Jahiz from which it borrows largely. Although he spent all his life in al-Andalus and did not travel to the East like some other Andalusian scholars, most of the his book's material is drawn from the East Islamic world. Also, Ibn Abd Rabbih quoted no Andalusian compositions other than his own. He included in his book his 445-line Urjuza, a poem in the meter of the rajaz in which he narrates the warlike exploits of Abd al-Rahman al-Nasir, along with some of his eulogies of the Umayyads of al-Andalus. A major study of its sources was undertaken by Werkmeister.

As transliterated and translated by Isabel Toral-Niehoff, the books for The Unique Necklace are:

The Būyid vizier Sahib ibn Abbad 'is commonly quoted to illustrate the alleged lackluster reception the book met in the Orient': he is alleged to have said '“this is our merchandise brought back to us.” I thought this book contained some information about their country [Andalusia]. But it rather contains information about ours. We have no need for it' (alluding to Koran 12:65). However, it was widely copied—about 100 manuscripts are known—and was frequently excerpted. It was also among the earliest adab works to be printed and has been printed at least ten times since in different editions. The collection was not, however, translated until scholarly European translations of portions began in the nineteenth century.

...
Wikipedia