Al-Jahiz - the First Islamic Zoologist
By David W. Tschanz
01/10/2001
In every generation and among every nation, there are a few individuals
with the desire to study the workings of nature; if they did not exist, those
nations would perish. The best style is the clearest, the style that needs no explication and no
notes, that conforms to the subject expressed, neither exceeding it nor
falling short. The most important of Al-Jahiz's works, however, is the Book of Animals -
Kitab al-Hayawan - which, even incomplete, totals seven fat volumes in the
printed edition. It contains important scientific information and anticipates a
number of concepts that were not fully developed until the first half of the
twentieth century. In the book, al-Jahiz discusses animal mimicry - noting that
certain parasites adapt to the color of their host - and writes at length on the
influences of climate and diet on men, and plants and animals of different
geographical regions. He discusses animal communication, psychology and the
degree of intelligence of insect and animal species. He also gives a detailed
account of the social organization of ants, including from his own observation,
a description of how they store grain in their nests so that it does not spoil
during the rainy season. He even knew that some insects are responsive to light
- and used this information to suggest a clever way of ridding a room of
mosquitoes and flies.
So wrote Abu 'Uthman 'Amr ibn Bakr al-Kinani al-Fuqaimi al-Basri, better known
as al-Jahiz - the Goggle-Eyed - in his magnum opus, the Book of
Animals.
Al-Jahiz himself was one of those individuals and was fortunate to live during
one of the most exciting epochs of intellectual history - the period of the
transmission of Greek science to the Arabs and the development of Arabic prose
literature. Al-Jahiz was intimately involved in both.
Born about the year 776, some 14 years after the foundation of Baghdad by the
Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur, al-Jahiz grew up in Basra, Iraq, founded early in
Islamic times as a garrison city but by the time of his birth was a major
intellectual center, along with its rival, Kufa.
Al-Jahiz attended Basra's schools, studying under some of the most eminent
scholars of Islam. One of the most important aspects about the period of
Al-Jahiz's intellectual development and his life was that books were readily
accessible. Though paper had been introduced into the Islamic world only shortly
before al-Jahiz's birth, it had, by the time he was in his 30's, virtually
replaced parchment, and launched an intellectual revolution.
The availability of a cheap writing material was accompanied by another social
phenomenon --the rise of a reading public. For the first time since the fall of
the Roman Empire, the cities of the Middle East contained a large number of
literate people - many of humble origins.
Al-Jahiz and his parents, for example, were poor themselves; as a young man of
20 he sold fish along one of the Basran canals. Nevertheless, al-Jahiz learned
to read and write at an early age, indicating the opportunities for "upward
mobility" in eighth-century Iraq. Al-Jahiz tells the story of how his
mother presented him with a tray of paper notebooks, and told him that it would
be by means of these that he would earn his living.
Al-Jahiz began his career as a writer - a precarious profession both then and
now- while still in Basra. He wrote an essay on the institution of the caliphate
- which met with approval from the court in Baghdad - and from then on seems to
have supported himself entirely by his pen, if we except a single three-day
stint as a government clerk. The fact that he never held an official position
allowed him an intellectual freedom impossible to someone connected to the court
- though he did dedicate a number of his works to viziers and other powerful
functionaries. In turn, he often received gifts of appreciation for these
"dedications". He received 5,000 gold dinars from the official to whom
he dedicated his Book of Animals.
Al-Jahiz wrote over two hundred works, of which only thirty have survived. His
work included zoology, Arabic grammar, poetry, rhetoric and lexicography. He is
considered one of the few Muslim scientists who wrote on scientific and complex
subjects for the layman and commoner. His writings contain many anecdotes,
regardless of the subject he is discussing, that make his point and bring out
both sides of the argument. Some of his books are: The Art of Keeping One's
Mouth Shut, Against Civil Servants, Arab Food, In Praise of Merchants, and Levity
and Seriousness. On the style of writing, al-Jahiz stated that:
An early exponent of the zoological and anthropological sciences, al-Jahiz
discovered and recognized the effect of environmental factors on animal life;
and he also observed the transformation of animal species under different
factors. Furthermore, in several passages of his book, he also described the
concept, usually attributed to Charles Darwin, of natural selection.
Al-Jahiz's concept of natural selection was something new in the history of
science. Although Greek philosophers like Empedocles and Aristotle spoke of
change in plants and animals, they never made the first steps towards developing
a comprehensive theory. To them change, was only a concept of simple change and
motion and nothing more than that.
Eighty-seven folios of the Book of Animals (about one-tenth of the
original text by al-Jahiz) are preserved in the Ambrosiana Library in Milan.
This collection (a copy of the original) dates from the 14th century and bears
the name of the last owner, 'Abd al-Rahman al-Maghribi, and the year 1615. These
folios of the Book of Animals contain more than 30 illustrations in
miniature.
Al-Jahiz returned to Basra after spending more than fifty years in Baghdad. He
died in Basra in 868 as a result of an accident in which he was crushed to death
by a collapsing pile of books in his private library. A fitting death for a
writer.