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Extracts from Jahiz other books
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Left a Leaf from the manuscript investigation into commerce; right from Avarice & the Avaricious


Al-Tabassur bi'l-tijara (Investigation into Commerce)

Taken from: Bernard W Lewis; Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople

Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World by Olivia Remie Constable, Irving W. Raymond,

Cahiz’in et-Tebessur bi’t-Ticara-Ticare Adli Risalesi ;  Dr. M. Mahfuz Soylemez

Note: this might well be the coast of Berbera instead of the city Berbera (in the northern part of the horn of Africa) because in the whole chapter (about export products from various places) the author tends to mention big geographical areas instead of small harbors or towns.

P9

The most valuable Amber is of grey colour (Eşheb); the Zanj Amber is more valuable than the blue and the yellow one which is the most common…..

P13-14

The best leopard skins are from Berbera, spotted with bright white and deep black, with long spots like a starling. The finest skins are those with a small, clear black spot in the middle of the black part. If the black parts are joined to one another by a light black line, it is still finer. If the skin contains red with bright white and jet black, it is more beautiful and of higher price. The leopards of Berbera are small; one skin barely covers a single saddle. The highest price of a skin is 50 dinars (1). The North African and Indian skins are wider and bigger, but they do not fetch high prices and are not of good quality. The best leopard skins are spotted.

P17

The imports in Iraq .

….

From Barbary and the borders of the Maghrib: panthers, salam leaves (2), felts, and black hawks.

From Yemen: eye lotion, tanned skins, giraffes, cuirasses, colored gems, incense, the leaves of the Khitr (for dyeing) and the spice safran-bamboo (Zingiberaceae).

P18

From Misri (13)

Zebra (el-humru'l-hemalic), fine clothes, paper, rozewood oil, precious stones.

P25

The best falcons are the white ones found between the Turkish land and Gilan (14), then the black corvine ones from the land of the Zanj to the Yemen and India, the bright red ones, then the dune-colored ones.

From his Al-Bayan wa'l-tabyin (The explanation and the evidence):


This was one of al-Jahiz'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-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.

 

Taken from: race and Slavery in the Middle.  East Bernard Lewis 1990.

Islamkundliche Untersuchungen Volumes 51-54  1970

Al-Jāḥiẓ on Misarticulation: Bayān 1.34.4-74.8 by James E. Montgomery Journal of Arabic Literature, Vol. 49, 2018

البيان والتبيين [الجاحظ] https://shamela.ws/book/10614

 

Vol1 p65-66

The quality of Arabic spoken by the urban people was much inferior to the language of the Bedouins. One could also notice the phonetic differences of Arabic uttered by Nabateans of the Sawad (6), Khorasanians (4), Zanjis, Sindis (16) and Sicilians in the Mediterranean.

 

Vol1 p137

And if you have heard me refer to the crowd, I do not care about the peasants and the mob, the artisans and the petty traders. Nor do I care about the Kurds in the mountains and the inhabitants of the islands in the sea, and I don't care about the peoples like the Berbers, the Țailasans, the Muqans and the Gilans (they all live on the west and south-west coasts of the Caspian Sea), the Zang and those resembling the Zang. However, of all men, the peoples worthy of mention are four in number: the Arabs, the Persians, the Indians and the Byzantines. The rest are savages and those resembling savages. 

 

Vol2 p58

Sahl ibn Harun: The Zanj would not pull out their front teeth if they knew how much they needed them to pronounce their letters properly and to maintain their ability to speak clearly.

 

Vol2 p60

Al-Madaini: Mubarak the Zanji agriculturalist was the most accomplished Zanji agriculturalist I ever met. I asked him: Why do some Zanj pull their front teeth out and why do others sharpen them? The Zanj who practice teeth sharpening, he said, do it for fighting and biting, because they eat human flesh. In time of war a king will eat the other kings he captures or kills. In any conflict the victor eats the vanquished. The Zanj who pull their teeth out say, Look at a sheep’s front teeth. We don’t want our teeth to become like sheep’s teeth. Heavens above, imagine how many good things in life they have missed out on because of their missing teeth.

 

Vol2 p69

However, the mimic can imitate the words the inhabitants of the Yemen use and how they pronounce them without missing a trick. He can mimic someone from Khurasan (4), al-Ahwaz (5), Zanj, Sind and any other region. Indeed, you may even find that he sounds more natural. When he mimics how a faltering speaker talks, it’s as if all the idiosyncratic features of every falterer on the face of the earth have been gathered together in one mouth. He can even mimic a blind man by making his face, eyes and limbs behave in an astonishing variety of ways that you will not find in one blind man out of a thousand, but it's as if he has combined in one blind person all the odd movements and features typical of blind people.

 

Vol2 p70

Aba Dabbubah the Zanji, member of the household of Ziyad, was standing at the Karkh Gate one day where the muleteers keep their donkeys for hire. He started to bray and every donkey, infirm, aged, wheezy or clapped out, brayed in response. Earlier that day, they heard real donkeys bray but paid them no heed. Not one single donkey stirred until Abu Dabbubah made them stir. He took all the features that make up a donkey's bray, and combined them in one single bray. He could do the same with the bark of a dog. The ancients claimed that man is called the microcosm, offspring of the macrocosm, because he can reproduce all shapes and forms with his hands, and imitate any sound with his mouth, because he eats plants as herbivores do and animals as carnivores do, and because his behavior contains elements of how all animal groups behave.

 

Vol3 p12-13

They (the Shu'ubiyya) (3) maintain that eloquence is prized by all people at all times- even the Zanj, despite their dimness, their boundless stupidity, their obtuseness (15), their crude perceptions and their evil dispositions, make long speeches.

 

Vol3 p35

Many people do not use anything except sticks in their fighting, including the Zanj: Qunbulat (Qanbalu) Walinjwih (Lunjuya), Walnaml (ants) Walkalabi (dogs), Watakfu (the multitude) Watanbu (the patient).  On this they depend in their wars. Among them are the Nabataeans (6), and they have culture, intensity and dominance, and how educated the Kurds are if they fight with sticks.

 

Vol3 p299

The poet said: Do not ask for honour among the Taghlib... The Walzanji is more generous than their maternal uncles, to beat all the accounts (17)… On the day of boasting, you did not weigh a weight, They were met by the forbearers on behalf of their enemies...... And upon the righteous, you see them as ignorant, and overbearing when you bow down to the villages...

 

Ibrahim bin Hani demonstrates that “it is the perfection of mizmar (musical reed instrument) to be played by a black woman,”

 

Risala nr 17: Alhunin 'iilaa al'awtan (Nostalgia for homelands)

Taken from: the translation by William M. Hutchins; Nine essays of al-Jahiz

 

A chapter of his risala (epistle): To al-Fath ibn Khaqan (7)

The virtues of the Turks and the general army of the caliphate

................

You asserted that the difference between the Turks and the Khurasani is not like the difference between the Persian and Arab, the Byzantine and the Slav, or the Zanj and the Ethiopian, not to mention those more distant in substance and more intensely different. It is rather, like the difference between a resident of Mecca and of Medina. 

 

Risalat al-qiyan (Epistle of the Singing Girls).

Taken from:Al-Jahiz: Epistle on Singing Girls by A.F.L. Beeston

 

Slaves are a variety of merchandise, subject to bargaining and chaffering over price; and both vendor and purchaser need to examine the piece of goods carefully, and subject it to a close scrutiny. For this purpose there is requisite the same sort of ocular selection as is obligatory in relation to all commodities sold. If a thing cannot be priced by measure of capacity, weight, number of linear measurement, it is judged by beauty or ugliness. Of this the only judge is a person with a trained eye, skilful in his trade. For the quality of beauty is too fine and delicate a thing to be appreciated by just anyone whose eye falls on it. Furthermore, intangible qualities cannot be judged by the witness of the eye alone; were it so, anyone who casts his glance on them would be a competent judge. Yet even in the case of cattle and asses, a correct judgment on them is only formed by someone with a perceptive eye, who must inspect them, form a mental estimate (of the ocular evidence), and transmit that evidence to his intellect; the final judgement on the objects proceeds from the intellect.

 

Kitab al-Bukhala; (Avarice & the Avaricious)

A collection of stories about the greedy. Humorous and satirical, it is the best example of al-Jahiz prose style. Al-Jahiz 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-Jahiz.

Taken from البخلاء  للجاحظ

 

We know that the Zanj are the least intelligent and the least discerning of mankind, and the least capable of understanding the consequences of actions. If their generosity was only from their perceived weakness of intellect and lack of foresight, if this were the reason for their generosity, one would expect to find the Romans seen as more intelligent more miserly than the Saqalabah (Slavic people from N-Europe) who are their intellectual inferiors.

 

He had the habit to say : I never had the pleasure to eat dates with a Zang or someone from Isfahan (8). The Negro is not choosing, there where I do; the ones from Isfahan they take a handful and before he has finished those won't touch the others.

 

Taken from: Owned by the Right Hand: The Theory and Practice of Slavery in Islamic Society by Christopher Scott Rose

 

A reference is made by Al Jahiz to the disease of the Zanj (marad al Zanj) contracted from working in the marches around Basra. (probably malaria)

Kitab al Akhbar (The Book of the New)

Taken from: Gerald Messadie : A History of the Devil

 

Having become interested in the Byzantine, we found that they were doctors, philosophers, and astronomers. They are familiar with the principles of music, are able to create Roman(weights and measures) and know the world of books. They are excellent painters........ They possess an architecture different from any other.... It is unarguable that they have beauty, are familiar with arithmetic, astrology, and calligraphy, and that they possess courage and a variety of great talents. The Blacks and similar peoples have less intelligence because they lack these qualities.

 

Kitab al Tarbi wal tadwir (Book of Expressions and Refinements)

Taken from: al-Tarbi wal-tadwir, edited. Ch. Pellat Damaskus 1955

 

Why is it that they do not speak different languages? Some speak the language of Zang, others the Nabateen (6), others Persian? If you say one finds among them people seldom found, the poet, the ……..

 

Taken from: THE ISLAMIC TENDENCY IN AL-JAHIZ'S PROSE WORKS: A STUDY OF SELECTED TEXTS FROM THE RASA’IL AL-JAHIZ COLLECTION by ZAMRI ARIFIN (Thesis)

 

P446

Tell me, at what date did mankind comprise a  single community speaking the same language? How many generations did it take for the Zanj to become black and the Slav white? Why did skin colour change more rapidly than other bodily features? Why is it that a child exhibits physical characteristics acquired by its father, not innate in him, and yet no Arab child is born insane? What is the factor that prevents this happening? How long it was after the Tower of Babel before each group had a complete language of its own in general use.

P446-447

Tell me, pray, which animal live longest: the vulture, the onager, the snake or the lizard? When can snake go without food? When do lizards live on nothing but air? When do vultures stop breeding? Why is it that the mule, which is a cross between an ordinary pigeon and ring-dove, reproduces itself, and the bukhti, which is a cross between two humped camel and a female dromedary, likewise?

 .... Tell me about the giraffe: is it really a cross between female hyaena and she- camel?

 

Al-Bursan wal-Eurjan wal-Eumyan wal-Hulan (Albersan, lame, blind, strabismus)

 

Taken from: islamicbook.ws   البرصان والعرجان

 

(Note: book on social responses to physical disability- here about the Zinj)

And the wives of the Zinj exceeded maturity and burned the children (in the womb), some of them protested the saying of Ubayd Allah bin Ziyad bin Zebyan (9) to Abd al-Malik bin Marwan (10): By God, I am more like my father from dates with dates, and carbuncles with coal, flies with flies, and crow with crow, but if you want your experience with someone who does not resemble his father, he said: Who is that? He said: Who did not mature in the womb, even if it was born completely and did not look like maternal uncles and (paternal) uncles.

 

All (black) things prevail in a Zinj except his teeth and the white of his eyeballs, and the color of his palms and nails is a color between white and black.

 

It was said: a lot of saliva makes not to show the smell of the mouth. Therefore, the dogs have the best breath ……... And the best from the people are the Zinj ………

 

The color of the night is troublesome ... the first ones grow lame

A vein captured by the Zinj.

 

Albaghal (Mules) (d869)

 

Taken from : islamicbook.ws  البغال

 

(About the mule)

And every animal other than it if it reaches puberty, it would have no vigor except for cramping, crouching, and eating and drinking.

It is, however, one of the darkest animals, and the most far-fetched of animals, and we find value in all animals in the noble animals except in fragments, and this is common in Zunuy (=pl of Zanj) and Abyssinians and you find it in donkeys and mules.

 

Sharib wa al-Mashrub (Essay on the Drink and Drinkers)

 

Taken from: The Life and Works of Jahiz By Jāḥiẓ

 

(About Medina) ….. I reply: The pre-eminence of a town makes nothing lawful or unlawful ; these things are known only from the eloquent Book and the acknowledged Sunna (11), from authentic traditions and specific tests. Who, after all, is this Emigrant ( Muhajir) or member of the Ansar (12) on whose authority the unlawfulness of nabidh (wine of dates) is reported? If he were a fair opponent , he would acknowledge that the people of Medina who prohibit nabidh are no more virtuous than those who condone certain abnormal sexual practices — just as some Meccans regard the lending of wives as lawful , and others regard animals slaughtered by Zanj as unlawful because , they say , they are too ugly , while some Meccan judges pass sentence on the strength of a single witness or a single oath , contrary to the letter of the Revelation.

 

Al-Rasayil al-Siyasia (Political messages)

 

Taken from: كتاب الرسائل السياسية by [الجاحظ] shamela.ws

 

Everyone is a creation of God, so He has the right “to make of His servants whomever He wishes an Arab, and whoever He wishes a foreigner, and whoever He wishes a Quraishi (=clan of the Prophet Muhammed), and whoever He wishes a Zanj, just as He has the right to make whomever He wishes a male, and whoever He wishes a female, and whoever He willed a hermaphrodite. God divided the natures, characteristics, attributes, and abilities among people just as He divided the clay of the earth, making some of it stone, some of it ruby, some of it gold, some of it copper, etc.

 

(1) Dinars: gold coin of one mithqal (4-5 gr of gold).

(2) salam leaves: (syzygium polyanthum) - aromatic leaves used in Indonesian cooking.

(3) Shu'ubiyya: group of Persian intellectuals who would put the Persians at equal footing as the Arabs.

(4) Kurasaner: person from Khorasan: Afghanistan + Eastern Iran.

(5) Ahwazer: person from Ahwaz a province in Iran

(6)Nabateans of the Sawad,

Nabatean: were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the southern Levant.

Sawad: the name used in early Islamic times (7th–12th centuries) for southern Iraq.

(7) al-Fath ibn Khaqan: ( c. 817/8 – 861) was an Abbasid official and one of the most prominent figures of the court of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil.

(8) Isfahan: is a city in central Iran.

(9) Ubayd Allah bin Ziyad bin Zebyan: was the Umayyad governor of Basra, Kufa and Khurasan during the reigns of caliphs Mu'awiya I and Yazid I, (653-54 - 686-87)

(10) Abd al-Malik bin Marwan: Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan ibn al-Hakam (644 - 705) was the fifth Umayyad caliph, ruling from 685 until his death.

(11) Sunna: is the Arabic term for the prophet Muhammad's way of life and legal precedent.

(12) Ansar: lit. 'The Helpers'; were the local inhabitants of Medina who, in Islamic tradition, took the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers (the Muhajirun) into their homes when they emigrated from Mecca during the hijra.

(13) =Egypt

(14) one of the provinces of Iran.

(15) the quality of being slow to understand.

(16) now in Pakistan

(17) Ghiyath ibn Ghawth ibn al-Salt ibn Tariqa al-Taghlibi commonly known as al-Akhtal (Al-Ahtal), was one of the most famous Black-Arab poets of the Umayyad period. He was one of the ‘Arab crows’. He belonged to the Banu Taghlib tribe, and was, like his fellow-tribesmen, a Christian.

These verses originated from the poet Jarir ibn Atiya (728) in his war of poems with the black poet al-Akhtal of the Taghlibi tribe.

This is repeated by: Al Jahiz (869); Ahmed bin Yahya bin Jabir (893); Masudi (916); Muhammad ibn Tahir Ibn al-Qaysarani (1113); Ibn Al Athir (1231).