Circa 776 - 869
Adab Writer

Career. A native of Basrah in Iraq, al-Jahiz was one of the non-Arabs who made up most of the intellectual and scholarly class in that country. He was apparently of African ancestry, as he is described as black and as he wrote Risalat mufakharat al-sudan 'ala al-bidan (Treatise on the Superiority of Blacks over Whites). Educated in the cosmopolitan milieu of Basrah, the chief Indian Ocean port of the khilafah, al-Jahiz belonged to the literary and intellectual circles of the city, which had strong economic and political ties with Turkestan, India, and the Indian Ocean area in general. From about 815, he rose to become one of the literary figures around the Abbasid khalifah al-Ma'mun (ruled 813-833), who greatly valued scholarship. As a result, al-Jahiz moved to the capital, Baghdad, and later to Samarra' after it became the capital from 836. He retained...