The original plan of the author, of dividing the whole work into four parts and subdividing each into 25 chapters, is accurately indicated in the Comparative Index of the 100 chapters; but the difficulty arises in the arrangement of anecdotes, which in the original scheme of the author is very unsatisfactory. The author’s only concern was, as appears from the general survey of the chapters, to illustrate each chapter with the anecdotes of various personalities, periods, subjects, which are more or less loosely connected with the chapter-heading. There are indications that the author himself realised the inconsistency of his own arrangement, although he has taken care to begin each chapter with a short introduction on the subject and close it with a panegyric, which serves as a garland for his patron. There being no definite aim to exhaust the available material on a chosen subject or to illustrate its various aspects systematically, but only to incorporate detached accounts and stray anecdotes in this encyclopaedic collection, the need for a systematic re-classification arises.

In the accompanying index an attempt is made to indicate briefly the actual nature of the anecdotes analysed in the complete Table of Contents, to bring together anecdotes illustrating a particular subject, and to afford an opportunity of surveying the existing material on a particular subject, scattered over the 2113 units of this collection. This re-classification is a horizontal division as compared with that of the author, and will perhaps serve as a tentative historical, though not chronologically arranged, subject-index to the whole work. The contents of the hundred chapters are comprised in ten main categories, which are further divided into tangible units. The first six categories precisely indicate the historical material which is classified and elucidated. The seventh category is very general, and as most of the anecdotes in the section of Ethics are historical, they are recorded in their proper places in sections V and VI. The remaining categories show at a glance the principal topics of discussion and the number of anecdotes relating to each topic.

In the words of Dr. R. A. Nicholson, the present writer “has made a systematic analysis and classification of the contents of the above book (Jawámi‘u’l-Ḥikáyát), thus enabling students for the first time not only to see exactly what is there, but also readily to find any subject in which they may be interested”.