al-Jāhiz
Al-Jāḥiz (c. 776-868) was a prominent Arab naturalist, writer, and scholar from Basra, known for his significant contributions to Arabic literature and thought. His life likely began in a context marked by the presence of East African slaves in southern Iraq, which has led to speculation about his ancestry. Al-Jāḥiz earned a reputation for his unique writing style, combining wit and satire, while engaging with a variety of topics, including theology, zoology, and social commentary. He studied in both Basra and Baghdad and was associated with the rationalist Mu'tazilite school of thought, advocating for logical discourse and debate.
His most notable works include "Kitāb al-hayawan" (Book of Animals), an early exploration of zoological classification, and "Kitāb al-bukhalā" (Book of Misers), which critiques societal behaviors through a series of engaging anecdotes. Al-Jāḥiz's innovative prose style helped to revitalize Arabic literature, moving it beyond religious texts and government reports to encompass a broader range of human experience. He acknowledged and integrated Greek philosophical ideas into his work, enhancing the intellectual landscape of his time. His legacy influenced subsequent generations of scholars, particularly in Muslim Spain, where his writings became pivotal models for literary expression.
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al-Jāhiz
Arabic writer
- Born: c. 776
- Birthplace: Basra (now in Iraq)
- Died: 868
- Place of death: Basra (now in Iraq)
As the first important Arabic prose writer, al-JāḥizŃ employed his vast erudition and innovative stylistic technique to free the Arabic language from its theological and philological restraints, making it a tool for the long-term cultural cohesion of the diverse cultures of Islam.
Early Life
Al-JāḥizŃ (ehl-JAHK-ihz) might have been the child of East African slaves, who were numerous in southern Iraq in the eighth and ninth centuries. His ancestry is uncertain, however. The sobriquet al-JāḥizŃ (goggle-eyed) refers to a remarkable physical condition that observers may have attributed to African origins. People of his time described al-JāḥizŃ as an exceptionally ugly individual.
Al-JāḥizŃ studied in his hometown of Basra, then went off to Baghdad for advanced education. He appears to have been employed early as a clerical official or copyist for the government. His unusual stylistic flair came to the attention of high officials, and the ՙAbbāsid caliph al-Ma՚mūn (r. 813-833) commissioned him to write a series of essays justifying the ՙAbbāsid seizure of power from the previous Ummayad Dynasty in Damascus around 750. According to some sources, the caliph once considered employing al-JāḥizŃ as a personal tutor for his sons, but was so unnerved by his physical appearance that he decided against him. (In fairness to the caliph, it should be noted that al-JāḥizŃ also had a reputation for a bitter and irascible temperament.)
Al-JāḥizŃ was an active and productive individual, involved, like many Muslim intellectuals of this time, in a variety of arenas. He followed the rationalist Mutazilite school of Islamic thought, which reveled in logical analysis and lively debate; the Mutazilite sect that he founded appears to have espoused some radical theological views. Al-JāḥizŃ was fond of defending unpopular positions in public debate even when he did not personally agree with them. He also dabbled in the natural sciences; his zoological treatise, Kitāb alhayawan (ninth century; book of animals), constituted one of the earliest attempts in Islam to formulate orders of living things. Of the more than 120 works attributed to al-JāḥizŃ by thirteenth century geographer and biographer Yaqut (1179-1229), however, only a few are extant.
Al-JāḥizŃ, who was fluent in Greek as well as Arabic, borrowed heavily from the Hellenistic tradition, frequently quoting or citing Aristotle and other Greek intellectual figures. Among Arabic scholars of his time, he was one of the most inclined to acknowledge his debt to Greek learning.
Life’s Work
The literary career of al-JāḥizŃ owes much to the development in Islam of the concept of adab, or high culture. Adab demanded of its practitioners not only an eclectic knowledge base but also certain mannerisms and styles of expression considered appropriate to a cultivated intellectual elite. The content of adab might vary according to the personality of the individual; theology and Islamic canon law (Shariՙa) were considered appropriate subject matter. The keystone of adab, however, was literary and rhetorical expression. Eloquence was considered one of the essential virtues; indeed, in rigorously pious circles the spoken word was one of the few forms of emotional expression to which one might manifest visible reaction. Conventions of verbal elegance soon came to be applied in literary practice as well, so that good writing was elevated alongside rhetoric as a quality of the cultivated.
The evolution of adab raised difficulties concerning the heretofore restricted and unimaginative use of Arabic in written form. Written Arabic often adhered slavishly to Qur՚ānic expression, and in al-JāḥizŃ’s age prose style was rigid and inflexible. Writers were essentially clerks and secretaries who compiled rather than created. There was a heavy emphasis on such traditional topics as the life of Muḥammad and early Islam, as well as a consuming regard for philology at the expense of experiment. Matters of everyday life and those not directly related to the Qur՚ān or canon law were addressed only in poetry.
Al-JāḥizŃ sensed that Arabic literary expression was at a dead end that if current trends continued, Arabic would soon be relegated to use in religious observances only. To overcome this problem, he struck out in new directions with a prose style intended, as he described it, to be both educational and entertaining and to reach a broader segment of the literate public. Al-JāḥizŃ combined a witty and satirical style with his breadth of learning to produce a large corpus of works on all aspects of contemporary life. He made extensive use of anecdotes to make his writing accessible by varying its structure and pace. Al-JāḥizŃ’s frequent use of a rhymed, cadenced prose style called saj՚ deeply influenced adab culture even in media such as personal correspondence. He was also one of the first Arabic writers to employ irony as a literary device.
Among the surviving works of al-JāḥizŃ, one that well illustrates his style is Kitāb al-bukhalā (book of misers), in which he rebukes members of the Persian urban middle class, contrasting their behavior with the generosity of the Arabs. It is not the dubious ethnic stereotypes that make the work interesting, however, but the manner of presentation. Marked by witty, vibrant prose, the work is filled with anecdotes about well-known past and contemporary figures who serve as negative examples of the virtue of generosity. Some have suggested that the format and style of the work continues in Arabic a tradition going back to the CharactĪres ethikōi (c. 319 b.c.e.; The Moral Characters of Theophrastus, 1702, best known as Characters) of Theophrastus (c. 372-c. 287 b.c.e.), in that al-JāḥizŃ replicates the Greek philosopher’s brief and vigorous descriptions of moral character types.
Never one to dodge controversy, al-JāḥizŃ wrote on a wide variety of issues of the time. In his Kitāb al-Bayan wa-al-Tabyin (book of eloquence and exposition), he attacked the populist Shuubi movement, which proclaimed the superiority of non-Arabs over Arabs in religious and cultural achievement. Not surprisingly, many Shuubis were Persians, who, in the view of al-JāḥizŃ, were most responsible for the clerical and bureaucratic pedantry to which Arabic literature had been reduced. Besides an essay that extolled the virtues of the Turks, al-JāḥizŃ wrote one on black Africans and several on corruption and venality in government.
If al-JāḥizŃ was something of a muckraker, he was also a devout Muslim. Deeply concerned by what he saw as a growing cynicism and infidelity among the literate classes, he never lost an opportunity to weave theology into his commentaries on everyday life and his descriptions of exemplary behavior.
Significance
As a scholar and man of letters, al-JāḥizŃ had a lasting effect on Islamic culture. His zoological treatise, which, though wide-ranging and imaginative, treats zoology almost as a branch of philology and literature, found many emulators. Among them were the cosmographer al-Qazwīnī and the thirteenth century Egyptian scientist al-Damīrī, generally regarded as the greatest Muslim figure in early zoology.
Al-JāḥizŃ changed for all time the nature and function of Arabic prose; without him, the development of Arabic secular writing would have been almost unthinkable. No longer would Arabic be restricted merely to government reports, theology, and the recounting of the life of Muḥammad and the Arab conquests; no longer would Arabic literacy be limited to a privileged few. Al-JāḥizŃ showed that Arabic is a subtle and supple literary language, able to express the entire spectrum of human activity and desire, a vehicle in which literary devices could be exploited to their fullest effect.
Al-JāḥizŃ was to become something of a cultural hero in Muslim Spain, setting of one of the greatest cultural flowerings in the medieval world. Spanish Muslims who traveled to Syria and Iraq to study heard al-JāḥizŃ lecture and eagerly sought copies of his manuscripts to take home, where they became models of literary style for several centuries to come.
Bibliography
De Somogyi, J. “Al-JāḥizŃ and Ad-Damīrī.” Annual of the Leeds University Oriental Society 1 (1958-1959): 55-60. A brief examination of the influence of al-JāḥizŃ on this Muslim scientist who, several centuries later, used his work as a model.
Dodge, Bayard, ed. and trans. The Fihrist of al-Nadīm: A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. This volume contains a brief biography of al-JāḥizŃ in traditional Muslim form, also listing some of the scholars associated with him, by a tenth century chronicler. A good example of biographical treatment at the time, it provides a sense of the intellectual environment in which al-JāḥizŃ lived and worked.
Hirschfeld, H. “A Volume of Essays by al-JāḥizŃ.” In A Volume of Oriental Essays Presented to Edward G. Brown, edited by T. W. Arnold and R. A. Nicolson. Cambridge, England: Clarendon Press, 1922. Offers commentary on a previously untranslated group of essays and notes.
Hodgson, Marshall G. S. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization. 3 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Vol. 1 includes a discussion of the characteristics and development of adab culture and the role al-JāḥizŃ played in articulating its literary aspects. Shows the great breadth of intellectual and literary activity embraced by adab and the diversity of knowledge required of its practitioners.
JāḥizŃ, al-. Sobriety and Mirth: A Selection of the Shorter Writings of al-JāḥizŃ. Translated by Jim Colville. New York: Kegan Paul, 2002. Writings on social and moral issues, including “This Life and the Life to Come,” “The Superiority of Blacks to Whites,” “Anthropomorphism Refuted,” “Drink and Drinkers,” and “On Women.”
Marshall, D. R. “An Arab Humorist: Al-JāḥizŃ and ’The Book of Misers.’” Journal of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Malta 4 (1970): 77-97. Emphasizes secular as opposed to theological overtones of al-JāḥizŃ’s work and discusses the various literary devices and idioms that gave his writing wide appeal.
Menocal, Maria Rosa, Raymond P. Scheindlin, and Michael Sells, eds. The Literature of Al-Andalus. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Surveys the literature of Muslim Spain. Includes illustrations, a bibliography, and index.
Ouyang, Wen-chin. Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Culture: The Making of a Tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997. Chapter 3 explores the early tradition of medieval Arabic-Islamic literary criticism and discusses literary value and al-JāḥizŃ’s work. Bibliography, index.
Pellat, Charles. Introduction to The Life and Works of JāḥizŃ: Translations of Selected Texts. Translated by D. M. Hawke. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. The essays in this volume cover topics such as politics, theology, rhetoric, science, manners, love, and society. The short introduction is a useful discussion of the career and significance of al-JāḥizŃ.
Zahniser, Mathias. “Source Criticism in the Uthmaniyya of al-JāḥizŃ.” Muslim World 70 (1980): 134-141. Argues that al-JāḥizŃ belonged to a sect called Uthmaniyya, which opposed the claims of the Shiis regarding the right of succession in Islam. Al-JāḥizŃ may have written tracts for the ՙAbbāsid caliphate supporting the rightful claim of Abū Bakr, the first caliph, to leadership.