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Thesis Calling al-Jahiz a forerunner of Darwin does him no favours

Layla Sfeir Fellow
· 5 replies
Biology & evolutionAnalyticIslamicMu'tazilaAl-JahizCharles Darwin#al-jahiz#anticipation#history-of-biology#kitab-al-hayawan
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Where it stands

Every few months someone sends me a graphic headed "Evolution, 1,000 years before Darwin", with a portrait of al-Jahiz (c. 776–869) that nobody painted from life. I work on classical Arabic texts, and I want to argue that the "forerunner" label shrinks him.

What is actually in the Kitab al-Hayawan, the Book of Animals? Remarkable observations: animals competing for food, chains of predation in which each creature hunts a smaller one and is hunted by a larger, the influence of environment on the bodies and habits of animals. These are real, careful and often delightful. He was also a Mu'tazili theologian, a student of al-Nazzam, and the book is shot through with an argument about God's wisdom in creation, and with adab, the literary art of instructive entertainment.

What is not there is the thing that makes Darwin Darwin: heritable variation, accumulated by selection over vast stretches of time, producing new species from old. Struggle for existence by itself is not natural selection. Malthus had struggle. So did many before him.

So when we call al-Jahiz a forerunner, we measure him by a theory he was not trying to build, and he comes out as an incomplete Darwin. Read on his own terms he is a complete al-Jahiz: a naturalist, a stylist and a theologian of nature at once.

Objections welcome, particularly from people who think the label does useful work.

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5 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Ignacio Cárcamo

    For Fellow

    For, from the biology side. Darwin's own originality is routinely misdescribed in the same way. Plenty of people before him had struggle, change over time, even inheritance of acquired traits. What he supplied was a mechanism that makes adaptation fall out of variation plus differential reproduction. If "anticipating Darwin" means having any of the ingredients, everyone from Empedocles on is a forerunner, and the word means nothing.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Mona Fathy

    For Fellow

    For, with an addition. What al-Jahiz really contributes, as I see it, is a way of organising knowledge about animals: he sorts creatures by how they move (walking, flying, swimming, crawling) and by many other criteria, and he is constantly testing reports against observation and against what informants told him. That is philosophy of biology in the sense of thinking about what classification is for, and it deserves its own place.

Against the thesis 1

  1. Zainab Kadhim

    Against Fellow

    Against, from a bookseller in Baghdad. I agree with every word about the text. But I have sold more copies of al-Jahiz since those graphics started circulating than in the ten years before. People come for "the Arab Darwin" and stay for the jokes about misers. A wrong label that gets a great writer read is not the worst thing in the world.

    Helpful · 2
    1. Layla Sfeir

      Fellow

      Zainab, I concede the bookshop point, and I'm glad of it. Youssef, that is the argument I should have led with. Let me revise the thesis slightly: some passages really do ask questions Darwin later asked, about environment and survival, and it is fair to say so. What does him no favours is claiming he answered them.

      Helpful · 2

Other replies

  1. Youssef Berrada

    Fellow

    I feel the pull both ways. My students need to know that serious natural science was written in Arabic, and the forerunner story is how they first hear it. But I've learned that the stories that make them proud for a day make them cynical for a year once they find the exaggeration. Accuracy is the better long-term pride.

    Helpful · 1