active 13th century Sidrac

Little is known about Sidrac as a historical person, and modern reference records often treat the name as the creator attached to the Book of Sydrac rather than as a fully documented individual. The work itself is generally described as an anonymous philosophical text written in Old French between about 1270 and 1300, which makes "Sidrac" feel partly like an authorial name and partly like the wise figure inside the book's tradition.

The text became famous across late medieval Europe. Often known as The Book of Sydrac the Philosopher or Livre de la fontaine de toutes sciences, it presents knowledge in a question-and-answer form, covering subjects from theology and natural philosophy to medicine and practical life. That wide scope helped it travel into several languages and manuscript traditions.

For modern readers, Sidrac is interesting less as a clearly biographed author than as the voice behind a remarkably curious medieval encyclopedia. The surviving tradition shows how strongly people of the Middle Ages wanted books that could answer big questions about the body, the soul, nature, and the structure of the world.