الجاحظ: حياته، ثقافته، مؤلفاته، ومنهجه في الأدب واللغة

Al-Jāḥiẓ: His Life, Culture, Works, and His Methodology in Literature and Language

Abstract

This article presents a comprehensive study of the great Abbasid writer and thinker Abū ʿUthmān ʿAmr ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ, focusing on the various stages of his life, his intellectual and scholarly formation, and the cultural and civilizational context that shaped his personality and methodology. It explains how al-Jāḥiẓ, despite his modest material circumstances, attained a distinguished position in Arabic literature and Islamic sciences through extensive reading, keen observation, and persistent pursuit of knowledge.

The study highlights the encyclopedic nature of al-Jāḥiẓ’s culture, which encompassed religious sciences, Arabic language and grammar, philosophy and logic, natural sciences, and social thought. It also emphasizes his ability to benefit from Greek and Persian intellectual traditions and to reshape them within an Islamic intellectual framework and Arabic literary taste, thereby giving his scholarly output a distinctive and original character.Furthermore, the article offers an analytical examination of al-Jāḥiẓ’s major works, such as Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, al-Bayān wa al-Tabyīn, al-Bukhalāʾ, and his epistles, revealing the diversity of his intellectual interests, the depth of his critical insight, and his strong social awareness. The study also clarifies his literary and linguistic methodology, which is characterized by realism, clarity and fluency of style, digression, the integration of seriousness with humor, and reliance on reason and argumentation.The article concludes that al-Jāḥiẓ is not only a foundational figure of Arabic prose but also a prominent intellectual representative of Islamic civilization, whose writings continue to serve as a rich source for literary, linguistic, and intellectual studies to this day.