SOURCE: "Rhetorical Criticism in Al-Jahiz's Al-Bayan Wa Al-Tabyin and Al-Hayawan," in Islamic Culture: An English Quarterly, Vol. XLI, No. 1, January, 1987, pp. 59-78.

In the following essay, Abu 'l-'Addus explores the new rules of rhetoric which al-Jahiz presented in al-Bayan wa al-Tabyin and al-Hayawan.

Arab writers regarded al-Jahiz as the establisher of the Arabic rhetoric. This was not because al-Jahiz formulated specific rules for rhetoric, but because in his books al-Bayan wa al-Tabyin and al-Hayawan he collected many texts and ideas about rhetorical criticism (naqd albalaghah), as we shall see below. These critical notices testify to the way in which the Arabs thought of eloquence in the third century A.H. In these two books, he discussed the dimensions of rhetoric (al-bayan), meaning and word, the idea that "every occasion has its appropriate speech," the eloquence of the Arabs (in riposte to the arguments of the Shu'ubiyah, who denied...