Al-Jahiz
Abu Uthman Amr ibn Bahr al-Kinani al-Basri, commonly known as al-Jahiz, was an Arab Muslim theologian, intellectual, and litterateur known for his individual Arabic prose. A polymath who lived during the Abbasid Caliphate, he was the author of works of literature, theology, zoology, philosophy, grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, philology, linguistics, and politico-religious polemics. His extensive zoological work has been credited with describing principles related to natural selection, ethology, and the functions of an ecosystem.
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The actual name of al-Jahiz was Abū ʿUthman ʿAmr ibn Bahr ibn Maḥbūb. His grandfather, Maḥbūb, was a protégé or mawali of ‘Amr ibn Qal‘ al-Kinānī, who was from Arab Banu Kinanah tribe.[n 1] Jahiz's forebears were likely of Sub-Saharan-African descent; his grandfather was 'black', and he himself retained some of the melanated complexion of his forefathers. 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 Banu Kinanah. However, the grandfather of al-Jāḥiẓ was reportedly a Black jammāl (cameleer) – or ḥammāl (porter); the manuscripts differ – of ‘Amr ibn Qal‘ named Maḥbūb, nicknamed Fazārah, or Fazārah was his maternal grandfather, and Maḥbūb his paternal. The names may however have been confused. His nephew also reported that al-Jāḥiẓ's grandfather was a black cameleer. In the early Islamic Arabia, the designation of Black (Arabic: السودان "as-swadan") was used to describe people like Zuṭṭ and Zanj, and based on this, several scholars have stated that al-Jahiz descended from one of these black communities, with some even suggesting that he was possibly of African descent.
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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 on the Quran, Arabic grammar, zoology, poetry, lexicography, and rhetoric. 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. Al-Nadīm cited this passage from a book of al-Jāḥiẓ: When I was writing these two books, about the creation of the Qur’ān, which was the tenet given importance and honour by the Commander of the Faithful,[n 4] and another about superiority in connection with the Banū Hāshim, the ‘Abd Shams, and Makhzūm.[n 5] What was my due but to sit above the Simakān, Spica and Arcturus, or on top of the ‘Ayyūq,[n 6] or to deal with red sulphur, or to conduct the ‘Anqā by her leading string to the Greatest King.[n 7]
Kitāb al-Ḥayawān (كتاب الحيوان) 'Book of the Animal'
Kitāb al-Ḥayawān is an extensive zoological encyclopedia in seven volumes[n 13] consisting of anecdotes, proverbs, and descriptions of over 350 animal species, including in-depth analyses of their ecosystems and behaviors. It was composed in honour of Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Mālik al-Zayyāt, who paid him five thousand gold coins. The 11th-century scholar al-Khatib al-Baghdadi dismissed it as "little more than a plagiarism" of Aristotle's Kitāb al-Hayawān – a charge of plagiarism was levelled against Aristotle himself with regard to a certain "Asclepiades of Pergamum". 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.
Kitāb al-Bukhalā’ (البُخلاء) 'The Book of Misers' (a.k.a. 'Avarice and the Avaricious')
Kitāb al-Bukhalā’ is 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. The book has two English translations: one by Robert Bertram Serjeant titled The Book of Misers, and another by Jim Colville titled Avarice and the Avaricious. Editions: Arabic (al-Ḥājirī, Cairo, 1958); Arabic text, French preface. Le Livre des avares. (Pellat. Paris, 1951)
Kitāb al-Bayān wa-al-Tabyīn 'The Book of Eloquence and Demonstration'
al-Bayan wa al-Tabyin was one of al-Jāḥiẓ's later works, in which he wrote on epiphanies, rhetorical speeches, sectarian leaders, and princes. The book is considered to have started Arabic literary theory in a formal, systemic fashion. 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.
Al-Radd ʿalā al-Naṣārā
Al-Jahiz was one of the earliest Muslims to make use of biblical material in Arabic translation. In his book titled "Al-Radd ʿalā al-Naṣārā", he asserted that the text of the extant Hebrew Bible was trustworthy and a more reliable source than the Christian Gospels. He also discredited Jewish translations of the Old Testament as a source for Christian arguments that Jesus was the literal Son of God, and asserted that the anthropomorphizing content of existing Jewish versions resulted from poor translation.
Fakhr al-Sūdān ala al-Bīḍān (فَخْر السُودان على البيضان) 'The Boast of blacks Over the Whites'
This book is composed as a debate between black people and white people as to which group is superior. Al-Jāḥiẓ mentions that Blacks have an oratory and eloquence of their own culture and language.
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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 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.
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Al-Jāḥiẓ intervened in a theological dispute between two Mu’tazilītes, and defended Abū al-Hudhayl al-'Allaf against the criticism of Bishr ibn al-Mu‘tamir. Another Mu‘tazilite theologian, Ja‘far ibn Mubashshir,[n 14] wrote a “refutation of al-Jāḥiẓ”. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, he was "part of the rationalist Mu’tazilite school of theology supported by the caliph al-Maʾmūn and his successor. When Muʿtazilism was abandoned by the caliph al-Mutawakkil, al-Jāḥiẓ remained in favour by writing essays such as Manāqib at-turk (Eng. trans., “Exploits of the Turks”).
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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 AD. 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.
