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Al-Jahiz

al-Jāḥiiẓ (Arabic: ‫( )اﻟﺠﺎﺣﻆ‬full name Abū


al-Jā
Uthman ʿAmr
ʿUthman Amr ibn Baḥr
Ba r al-Kinānī al-Ba
al-Baṣrī

‫( )أﺑﻮ ﻋﺜﻤﺎن ﻋﻤﺮو ﺑﻦ ﺑﺤﺮ اﻟﻜﻨﺎﻧﻲ اﻟﺒﺼﺮي‬born 776,
in Basra – December 868/January 869)
was an Arab prose writer and author of
works of literature, Mu'tazili theology, and
politico-religious polemics.
Al-Jahiz

Qatari stamp of al-Jāḥiẓ


Born 776
Basra, Abbasid
Caliphate
Died 868-9
Basra, Abbasid
Caliphate

Era Medieval era


Region Muslim scholar
Main interests Arabic literature

Influenced

Ibn Miskawayh, al-Biruni, Ibn Tufayl, Ibn


M ḍāʾ
Maḍāʾ

Early life
Not much is known about al-Jāḥiẓ's early
life, but his family was very poor. Born in
Basra early in 160/February 776, he
asserted in a book he wrote that he was a
member of the Arabian tribe Banu
Kinanah.[1][2] His nephew also reported
that al-Jāḥiẓ's grandfather was a black
cameleer.[3]

He sold fish along one of the canals in


Basra in order to help his family. Financial
difficulties, however, did not stop al-Jāḥiẓ
from continuously seeking knowledge. He
used to gather with a group of other
youths at Basra's main mosque, where
they would discuss different scientific
subjects. He also attended various
lectures given by the most learned men in
philology, lexicography and poetry.

Al-Jāḥiẓ continued his studies. Over a


span twenty-five years, he would acquire
considerable knowledge of Arabic poetry,
Arabic philology, and pre-Islamic Arab
history. He also studied the Qur'an and
the Hadiths. Additionally, al-Jāḥiẓ read
translated books on Greek sciences and
Hellenistic philosophy, especially that of
the Greek philosopher Aristotle. His
education was highly facilitated by the
fact that the Abbasid Caliphate was in a
period of cultural and intellectual
revolution. Books became readily
available, and this made learning easily
available.

Career

A giraffe from Kitāb al-Hayawān (Book of the


Animals) by al-Jāḥiẓ.

While still in Basra, al-Jāḥiẓ wrote an


article about the institution of the
Caliphate. This is said to have been the
beginning of his career as a writer, which
would become his sole source of living. It
is said that his mother once offered him a
tray full of notebooks and told him he
would earn his living from writing. He
went on to write two hundred books in
his lifetime on a variety of subjects,
including Arabic grammar, zoology,
poetry, lexicography, and rhetoric. Of his
writings, only thirty books survive. Al-
Jāḥiẓ was also one of the first Arabic
writers to suggest a complete overhaul of
the language's grammatical system,
though this would not be undertaken until
his fellow linguist Ibn Maḍāʾ took up the
matter two hundred years later.[4]

Al-Jāḥiẓ moved to Baghdad, then the


capital of the caliphate, in 816 AD,
because the Abbasid caliphs encouraged
scientists and scholars and had just
founded the House of Wisdom. Because
of the caliphs' patronage and his
eagerness to establish himself and reach
a wider audience, al-Jāḥiẓ stayed in
Baghdad (and later Samarra), where he
wrote a huge number of his books. The
caliph al-Ma'mun wanted al-Jāḥiẓ to
teach his children, but then changed his
mind when his children were frightened
by al-Jāḥiẓ's boggle-eyes (‫)ﺟﺎﺣﻆ اﻟﻌﻴﻨﻴﻦ‬.
This is said to be the origin of his
nickname. He enjoyed the patronage of
al-Fath ibn Khaqan, the bibliophile boon
companion of Caliph al-Mutawakkil, but
after his murder in December 861 he left
Samarra for his native Basra.[5] He died
there in late 868, according to one story,
when a pile of books from his private
library collapsed on him.[5]

Most important books


A page from al-Jāḥiẓ's Kitāb al-Hayawān depicting
an ostrich (Struthio camelus) in a nest with eggs.
Basra.

Kitab al-Hayawan (Book of the


Animals)

The al-Hayawan is an encyclopedia of


seven volume of anecdotes, poetic
descriptions and proverbs describing
over 350 varieties of animals. The work
was considered by the 11th-century
Muslim scholar Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi to
be "little more than a plagiarism" of
Aristotle's Kitāb al-Hayawān, a charge
that was once levelled against Aristotle
himself with regard to a certain
"Asclepiades of Pergamum".[6] Later
scholars have noted that there was only a
limited Aristotelian influence in al-Jāḥiẓ's
work, and that al-Baghdadi may have
been unacquainted with Aristotle's
work.[7]

Conway Zirkle, writing about the history


of natural selection science in 1941, said
that an excerpt from this work was the
only relevant passage he had found from
an Arabian scholar. He provided a
quotation describing the struggle for
existence, citing a Spanish translation of
this work:

The rat goes out for its food, and


is clever in getting it, for it eats
all animals inferior to it in
strength", and in turn, it "has to
avoid snakes and birds and
serpents of prey, who look for it
in order to devour it" and are
stronger than the rat. Mosquitos
"know instinctively that blood is
the thing which makes them live"
and when they see an animal,
"they know that the skin has been
fashioned to serve them as food".
In turn, flies hunt the mosquito
"which is the food that they like
best", and predators eat the flies.
"All animals, in short, can not
exist without food, neither can the
hunting animal escape being
hunted in his turn. Every weak
animal devours those weaker
than itself. Strong animals
cannot escape being devoured by
other animals stronger than they.
And in this respect, men do not
differ from animals, some with
respect to others, although they
do not arrive at the same
extremes. In short, God has
disposed some human beings as a
cause of life for others, and
likewise, he has disposed the
latter as a cause of the death of
the former."[8]

Kitab al-Bukhala (Book of


Misers) also (Avarice & the
Avaricious)
A collection of stories about the greedy.
Humorous and satirical, it is the best
example of al-Jāḥiẓ' prose style. Al-Jāḥiẓ
ridicules schoolmasters, beggars, singers
and scribes for their greedy behavior.
Many of the stories continue to be
reprinted in magazines throughout the
Arabic-speaking world. The book is
considered one of the best works of al-
Jāḥiẓ.

Kitab al-Bayan wa al-Tabyin


(The Book of eloquence and
demonstration)
al-Bayan wa al-Tabyinn was one of al-
Jāḥiẓ's later works, in which he wrote on
epiphanies, rhetorical speeches,
sectarian leaders, and princes. Though he
was neither a poet nor a philologist in the
proper sense - al-Jāḥiẓ took a keen
interest in almost any imaginable subject
- the book is considered to have started
Arabic literary theory in a formal,
systemic fashion.[9] Al-Jāḥiẓ's defining of
eloquence as the ability of the speaker to
deliver an effective message while
maintaining it as brief or elaborate at will
was widely accepted by later Arabic
literary critics.[10]
On the Zanj [ "Black Africans"]

Concerning the Zanj, he wrote:

Everybody agrees that there is no


people on earth in whom
generosity is as universally well
developed as the Zanj. These
people have a natural talent for
dancing to the rhythm of the
tambourine, without needing to
learn it. There are no better
singers anywhere in the world,
no people more polished and
eloquent, and no people less given
to insulting language. No other
nation can surpass them in bodily
strength and physical toughness.
One of them will lift huge blocks
and carry heavy loads that would
be beyond the strength of most
Bedouins or members of other
races. They are courageous,
energetic, and generous, which
are the virtues of nobility, and
also good-tempered and with
little propensity to evil. They are
always cheerful, smiling, and
devoid of malice, which is a sign
of noble character.

The Zanj say that God did not


make them black in order to
disfigure them; rather it is their
environment that made them so.
The best evidence of this is that
there are black tribes among the
Arabs, such as the Banu Sulaim
bin Mansur, and that all the
peoples settled in the Harra,
besides the Banu Sulaim are
black. These tribes take slaves
from among the Ashban to mind
their flocks and for irrigation
work, manual labor, and
domestic service, and their wives
from among the Byzantines; and
yet it takes less than three
generations for the Harra to give
them all the complexion of the
Banu Sulaim. This Harra is such
that the gazelles, ostriches,
insects, wolves, foxes, sheep,
asses, horses and birds that live
there are all black. White and
black are the results of
environment, the natural
properties of water and soil,
distance from the sun, and
intensity of heat. There is no
question of metamorphosis, or of
punishment, disfigurement or
favor meted out by Allah. Besides,
the land of the Banu Sulaim has
much in common with the land of
the Turks, where the camels,
beasts of burden, and everything
belonging to these people is
similar in appearance:
everything of theirs has a Turkish
look.[11]

Death
Al-Jāḥiẓ returned to Basra with
hemiplegia after spending more than fifty
years in Baghdad. He died in Basra in the
Arabic month of Muharram in AH
255/December 868-January 869 CE.[12]
His exact cause of death is not clear, but
a popular assumption is that al-Jāḥiẓ died
in his private library after one of many
large piles of books fell on him, killing him
instantly. [13]
See also
Shu'ubiyya
Ajam
List of Arab scientists and scholars

References
1. Al-Jahiz messages, Alwarraq edition,
page 188; Yāqūt, Irshād al-arīb ilá ma`rifat
al-adīb, ed. Iḥsān `Abbās, 7 vols (Beirut:
Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1993), 5:2102.
2. Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es Salaam. Chuo
cha Uchunguzi wa Lugha ya Kiswahili
(1974). Kiswahili . East African Swahili
Committee. p. 16.; Yāqūt, Irshād al-arīb
ilá ma`rifat al-adīb, ed. Iḥsān `Abbās, 7
vols (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1993),
5:2102.
3. https://books.google.com/books?
id=owqY-90imMIC&pg=PA152
4. Shawqi Daif, Introduction to Ibn
Mada's Refutation of the Grammarians,
pg. 48. Cairo, 1947.
5. Kennedy 2006, p. 252.
6. F. E., Peters (1968). Aristotle and the
Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam.
New York University Press. p. 133.
7. Mattock, J. N. (1971). "Review:
Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian
Tradition in Islam by F. E. Peters".
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London. 34
(1): 147–148.
doi:10.1017/s0041977x00141722 .
JSTOR 614638 . "...there is much more in
al-Jāḥiẓ, enough to indicate that he used
a version of Aristotle (or an epitome), but
still not very much. If al-Baghdadi thought
that the Kitab al-hayawan was a
plagiarism of the Aristotelian work he was
either a fool or unacquainted with
Aristotle."
8. Zirkle C (1941). "Natural Selection
before the "Origin of Species" ".
Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society. 84 (1): 71–123.
9. G. J. H. Van Gelder, Beyond the Line:
Classical Arabic Literary Critics on the
Coherence and Unity of the Poem, pg. 2.
Volume 8 of Studies in Arabic literature:
Supplements to the Journal of Arabic
Literature. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1982.
ISBN 9789004068544
10. G.J. van Gelder, "Brevity in Classical
Arabic Literary Theory." Taken from
Proceedings of the Ninth Congress of the
Union Européenne Des Arabisants Et
Islamisants: Amsterdam, 1 to 7
September 1978, pg. 81. Ed. Rudolph
Peters. Volume 4 of Publications of the
Netherlands Institute of Archaeology and
Arabic Studies in Cairo. Leiden: Brill
Archive, 1981. ISBN 9789004063808
11. "Medieval Sourcebook: Abû Ûthmân
al-Jâhith: From The Essays, c. 860 CE" .
Retrieved 2 October 2014.
12. al-Ṣūlī, Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyá (1998).
Kniga listov. Sankt-Peterburg: T͡Sentr
"Peterburgskoe vostokovedenie". p. 392.
13. Pellat, C. (1990). "Al-Jahiz". In
Ashtiany, Julia; Johnstone, T.M.; Latham,
J.D.; Serjeat, R.B.; Rex Smith, G. Abbasid
Belles Lettres . Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press. p. 81.
Retrieved 10 January 2017. "A late
tradition clams that Jahiz...was
smothered to death under an avalanche
of books."

Sources
Kennedy, Hugh (2006). When Baghdad
Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and
Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty .
Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
ISBN 978-0-306814808.

External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related
to Al-Jahiz.

Plessner, M. (2008) [1970-80]. "Al-


Jāḥith, Abū 'Uthmān 'Amr Ibn Baḥr" .
Complete Dictionary of Scientific
Biography. Encyclopedia.com.
Kitāb al-Hayawān (Book of Animals), by
Al-Jāḥiẓ (Full Arabic text)
Arabic literature
Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Al-
Jahiz&oldid=888473157"

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