Al-Jahiz
Arabic writer (776-869) · Writers · Lived 775 to 868 · aged 93
Al-Jahiz is read about 376 times a day, in 48 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 29 September 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 374 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?A 9th-century polymath whose sprawling observations of animal behavior anticipated natural selection by a thousand years, and whose prose style set the standard for Arabic literature.
Also in Deutsch
Photos 8
In their own words 4
, A noble man need not pretend to be virtuous, any more than a well-spoken man feigns eloquence.
The book is silent as long as you need silence,eloquent whenever you want discourse. He never interrupts you if you are engagedbut if you feel lonely he will be a good companion.
Everybody agrees that there is no people on earth in whom generosity is as universally well developed as the Zanj.
About this person
Abu Uthman Amr ibn Bahr al-Kinani al-Basri, called al-Jahiz ("the bug eyed"), was born around 776 in Basra and became a scribe and teacher before rising into the literary circle of Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun around 815. Aligned with the rationalist Mu'tazilite school, he wrote across theology, zoology, philosophy, linguistics, and rhetoric, producing nearly 140 works - 75 survive. His seven-volume Kitāb al-Ḥayawān used animals as a lens for principles now recognized as ethology and ecosystem function; Kitāb al-Bayān wa-l-tabyīn explored human communication; Kitāb al-Bukhalāʾ collected sharp anecdotes on miserliness. One of the first Muslims to work with Arabic biblical translations, he wrote until his death in 868 or 869. Tradition holds that a toppled wall of books buried him.
Writers born in the 770s 6
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