active 13th century Sidrac

Little is known about the person listed as Sidrac. Modern reference works describe The Book of Sydrac as an anonymous Old French philosophical and encyclopedic work, written roughly between 1270 and 1300, probably in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Rather than a conventional author biography, what survives is the reputation of the text itself. The work presents knowledge in a long series of questions and answers and ranges across religion, the natural world, medicine, morality, and marvels. It became widely read in the later Middle Ages and was translated into several languages, including Middle English as Sidrak and Bokkus.

Because the historical author cannot be securely identified, Sidrac is best understood as a legendary sage attached to a remarkably successful medieval book. The enduring interest of the work lies in how vividly it captures medieval curiosity about almost everything.