20 Facts About Al-Jahiz

Al-Jahiz's grandfather, Mahbub, was a protege or mawali of 'Amr ibn Qal' al-Kinani, who was from Arab Banu Kinanah tribe.

Al-Jahiz's nephew reported that al-Jahiz's grandfather was a black cameleer.

Al-Jahiz sold fish along one of the canals in Basra to help his family.

Al-Jahiz used to gather with a group of other youths at Basra's main mosque, where they would discuss different scientific subjects.

Al-Jahiz read translated books on Greek sciences and Hellenistic philosophy, especially that of the Greek philosopher Aristotle.

Al-Jahiz was critical of those who followed the Hadiths of Abu Hurayra, referring to his Hadithist opponents as al-nabita.

Al-Jahiz died 250 [AD 869], during the caliphate of al-Mu'tazz.

Al-Jahiz 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-Jahiz moved to Baghdad, then the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, in 816 AD, because the caliphs encouraged scientists and scholars and had just founded the library of the Bayt al-Hikmah.

Al-Jahiz even used to rent the shops of al-warraqun for study.

Al-Jahiz replaced Ibrahim ibn al-'Abbas al-Suli in the government secretariat of al-Ma'mun but left after just three days.

Al-Jahiz provided a quotation describing the struggle for existence, citing a Spanish translation of this work:.

Al-Jahiz was concerned with witnessing; he promoted the pleasures and fascinations of close looking and told his readers that there was nothing more important than this.

Al-Jahiz believed that God had done the making and that he had done it brilliantly.

Al-Jahiz certainly saw ecosystems, as we would call them now, in the natural world.

Al-Jahiz understood what we might call the survival of the fittest.

Al-Jahiz frequently used metaphors of webs and nets to express the interconnectedness of the natural world.

Al-Jahiz'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-Jahiz intervened in a theological dispute between two Mu'tazilites, and defended Abu al-Hudhayl against the criticism of Bishr ibn al-Mu'tamir.

Al-Jahiz returned to Basra with hemiplegia after spending more than fifty years in Baghdad.