Чи мандрувала бібліотека Сахіба ібн Аббада на 400 верблюдах?
The familiar story has a historical core, but its popular form overstates it. Ṣāḥeb Ebn ʿAbbād (c. 938–995) was a Persian scholar and vizier to the Buyid rulers. According to *Encyclopaedia Iranica*, the Samanid emir Nuh ibn Mansur invited him to serve in Khorasan. Ebn ʿAbbād reportedly declined, saying that transporting his personal library would require 400 camels.
This is an account of his reason for declining and a measure of the library’s scale; it does not establish that he routinely traveled with a camel caravan. Iranica estimates the collection at Rayy at roughly 100,000–200,000 volumes. The exact figure of 117,000 and the detail that camels walked in alphabetical order are not substantiated by the authoritative biographical source consulted.