James E. Montgomery
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748683321
- eISBN:
- 9780748695072
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748683321.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
This chapter reviews the following queries: Why were al-Jāḥẓ’s books rejected in this manner? What was the point of the critique? What exactly was attacked? Was it the author’s style of thinking ...
More
This chapter reviews the following queries: Why were al-Jāḥẓ’s books rejected in this manner? What was the point of the critique? What exactly was attacked? Was it the author’s style of thinking (Kalām) or writing? Did the work unsettle the attacker, resolutely determined not to be fashioned as al-Jāḥẓ’s ideal reader? Who was the attacker? Why is he unnamed? And what did al-Jāḥẓ hope to achieve by rehearsing his attacker’s arguments and refuting them by his praise of books? Chapter 4 considers these questions by putting The Book of Living in the textual environment of the third century, by reviewing attitudes to biographies and bibliographies, book writing and patronage, and by contrasting the formal indeterminacy of the Introduction with contemporary works. It concludes that al-Jāḥẓ designed his book to save society from the competitive strife in which argument and debate had engulfed it. Debate could now be internalised in the soul of the reader. This was made possible because books encouraged solitary reading and interior debate.Less
This chapter reviews the following queries: Why were al-Jāḥẓ’s books rejected in this manner? What was the point of the critique? What exactly was attacked? Was it the author’s style of thinking (Kalām) or writing? Did the work unsettle the attacker, resolutely determined not to be fashioned as al-Jāḥẓ’s ideal reader? Who was the attacker? Why is he unnamed? And what did al-Jāḥẓ hope to achieve by rehearsing his attacker’s arguments and refuting them by his praise of books? Chapter 4 considers these questions by putting The Book of Living in the textual environment of the third century, by reviewing attitudes to biographies and bibliographies, book writing and patronage, and by contrasting the formal indeterminacy of the Introduction with contemporary works. It concludes that al-Jāḥẓ designed his book to save society from the competitive strife in which argument and debate had engulfed it. Debate could now be internalised in the soul of the reader. This was made possible because books encouraged solitary reading and interior debate.
