Jahiz
JAHIZ (ABO TTHJIAN 'Aifk IBN BAHR UL- JAHIZ; i.e. " the man the pupils of whose eyes are prominent ") (d. 869), Arabian writer. He* spent his life and devoted himself in Basra chiefly to the study of polite literature. A Mu'tazilite in his religious beliefs, he developed a system of his own and founded a sect named after him. He was favoured by Ibn uz-Zaiyat, the vizier of the caliph Wathiq.
His work, the Kitab ul-Bayan wat-Tabyin, a discursive treatise on rhetoric, has been published in two volumes at Cairo (1895). The Kttab td-Mah&sin wal-Addad was edited by G. van Vlotcn as Le Latre dei beautes et des antitheses (Leiden, 1898) ; the Kitab ul-Bu-Hala. Le Livre des arares, ed. by the same (Leiden, 1900) ; two other smaller works, the Excellences of the Turks and the Superiority in Glory of the Blacks over the Whites, also prepared by the same. The Kilab ul-llayawun, or " Book of Animals," a philological and literary, not a scientific, work, was published at Cairo (1906).
(G. W. T.)
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
