by Robert Irwin
The Kitab al-Bukhala’, or ‘Book of Misers’, is one of Jahiz’s best-known works. It can be read as Jahiz’s lament for the decline in standards of hospitality in his own time (but in Arab literature each age perceives itself as a decline from the previous one). Partly the book was also written to demonstrate that the Arabs exceed all other races in generosity – in particular the Khurasanis (inhabitants of eastern Iran), who had a special reputation for meanness. Generosity was esteemed as one of the virtues in medieval Arab culture. It loomed particularly large in the minds of literary folk, who relied on their wits and their learning to secure them their next meal. Finally, like many of Jahiz’s products, the Kitab al-Bukbala can be read simply as entertainment. It is full of quirky portraits and anecdotes, such as the one concerning a governor of Basra who, after soaking himself in melted butter for medicinal reasons, had the butter sold on in the local markets. After word of this got about, Basrans stopped buying butter for a year.
One evening Zubaydah got drunk and donated a gown to a friend of his. Once the gown was on his drinking companion he was afraid Zubaydah would have second thoughts, for he knew it was a drunken slip of the tongue. So he went straight home and put on a black barnakan belonging to his wife. When morning came Zubaydah asked about the gown and looked for it. ‘You donated it to So-and-so,’ they said. So he sent to him, then went to him and said: ‘Don’t you realize that an intoxicated man’s gift, buying, selling, charity and pronouncement of divorce do not hold good in law? Furthermore, I dislike to receive no credit and that folk should attribute this to intoxication on my part. So give it back to me in order that I may present it to you of free will when sober, as I dislike any of my property to go to waste futilely!’ When he grasped he was resolved to keep it he addressed himself to him and said: ‘You, man! Folk jest and make fun without being in any way reprehended for it – so hand back the gown, Allah grant you good health.’ Said the man to him: ‘This is the very thing I feared. I didn’t set foot to ground until I had made a neck-opening in it for my wife and I have added to the sleeves and cut away the front parts. If after all this you want to take it back, take it back.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ll take it back as it will do for my wife as it did for yours.’ ‘It’s at the dyer’s,’ he said. ‘Hand it over!’ said Zubaydah. ‘It wasn’t I who gave it to him,’ countered the man. When he knew it was lost he said: ‘My father and my mother be ransom to the Apostle of Allah with regard to his dictum: “All evil was assembled in one room and locked in and the key to it was drunkenness.”’
Al-Jahiz, The Book of Misers, trans. Serjeant, p. 30
COMMENTARY
Zubaydah here is, unusually, a man’s name.
A barnakan is a woman’s black cotton dress.
‘All evil was assembled in one room and locked in and the key to it was drunkenness’ is a hadith or saying attributed to the Prophet.
Ma’bad said: ‘While I was [lodging] thus, a cousin of mine with a son of his arrived and suddenly a note from him came to me: “If those two persons who have just arrived are going to stay a night or two I shall put up with it, even though holding out hopes to lodgers of one night entails for me the desire [on their part] to stay for many nights.” So I wrote to him: “They are only going to stay with me for a month or so.” And he wrote back to me: “Your house is let [to you] for thirty dirhams – you are six persons – at five per head. So, seeing you have added two men, an additional two fives are due. From this very day you are due to pay forty for the house.” So I wrote back to him: “What harm does their staying here do you, and the weight of their bodies on the Earth which bears the burden of mountains, and the burden of provision for them which is my responsibility not yours? Write down for me your justification so that I can fathom it!” I didn’t realize what it was I attacked in attacking [him] and that I would fall into what I did with him – for he wrote to me:
‘ “The reasons leading to this are many, self-evident and recognized, one of which is the quick filling of the cesspit and the great inconvenience involved in cleansing it. Another is that with many feet, much treading on the surface of clay-covered roofs and floors of rooms plastered with gypsum and a lot of going up and down stairs, the clay thereby gets worn, the gypsum-plaster detached and the stair treads broken – to say nothing of beams sagging, being so much trodden upon and breaking because of the excessive weight. When there is constant coming and going, opening and closing, bolting and withdrawing of bolts, doors get broken and the metal seating into which the bolt is shot gets torn out. When there are lots of children and a greater number of people in the household, door-nails are torn out, every wood lock is pulled off, every metal sieve pulled out, every fenced place broken, little pits for the zadw game dug out, and they smash up the paving in it [the house] with wooden sleds. The afore-going besides the destruction of walls by [driving in] pegs and wood for shelves.
‘ “When there are many of the family, visitors, guests and drinking cronies, a lot of water needs to be poured and large water jars that drip and [porous] jars that percolate must be brought into use, up to many times more than previously. How many a wall has the lower part of it eaten away, the upper part crumbling, its foundations giving way and its structure threatening to collapse – all due to a dripping water jar, [water] percolating from a jar, the excessive [use of] well water and bad management. They require bread to be baked, meat cooked in broth to be prepared in proportion to their numbers, fuel and heating. Fire spares and leaves nothing and houses are just firewood to it, every item of furnishings in them food for it. How often a blaze has swept away [my] source of income. [Through a fire] you will have involved the people living in [the house] in the grossest expenditure. Perhaps this may take place when [they are] extremely hard up and in dire straits. Perhaps this evil [brought about by you] may spread to the neighbours’ houses and neighbouring persons and properties. If, at this point, folk were to leave the owner of the house to the measure of his misfortune and extent of his calamity, it might be bearable, but they regard him as ill-omened and continue finding it uncomfortable to speak of him, blaming him greatly and reproaching him harshly.
‘ “Yes indeed! Then they make the kitchens in the upper rooms over the ceilings although there is plenty of space on the ground floor of the house and ample room in the courtyard – despite the danger involved to persons, the unwitting exposure of goods to destruction, laying women open to evil-doers on the night of a fire, and at the same time to their intrusion on a hidden secret, a concealed person in seclusion, a guest in hiding, a house owner hiding himself, some forbidden liquor, some suspicious letter, a lot of money intended to be buried but the fire had overtaken its owner before he could do that with it, and in many circumstances and affairs with which folk do not like they become acquainted. Then they set up tannur ovens and stand up cookpots on the raised part of the roof where there is only a light covering of clay between them and the cane and beams – a thing that does not protect [them from fire, etc.]. This, despite the trifling trouble it would be to set them up properly and the [consequent] tranquillity of minds with regard to the places where damage could arise through them. If you set about this, on my behalf and yours, remembering [what it involves] it would be marvellous. But if you disregard your responsibility for my properties and forget your responsibility for your own properties, that would be even more of a marvel!
‘ “Many of you refuse to pay the rent and one defers payment of it until, when months [of arrears] he owes have accumulated, he runs away, leaving those to whom they are owed starving, regretting their leniency and kindness over requiring payment. Thanks and gratefulness from them are withholding of what is due to them and stealing off with their provisions.
‘ “The lodger lodges in them when he does, we having previously swept and cleaned them to look nice in the tenant’s eye and so that a person seeing them will want them. When he vacates [them] he leaves them a dung-heap and dilapidation, only repairable at grievous expense. Then there isn’
t a wooden door-bar left which he hasn’t stolen, a ladder he hasn’t carried off, building material he hasn’t taken away, a water-cooling jar with which he hasn’t gone off. He never stops beating clothes [to whiten them], pounding in the large and small mortars on the ground floor of the house, banging on chopping blocks, stone supports for cooking pots set in the floor and the wooden projecting windows. If the house has a tiled floor or is paved with baked brick and the owner of it has set a rock in a part of it upon which the pounding is to be done, to save the rest [from damage], [their] lack of care for others, hard-heartedness, deceit and miserable character prompt them to pound away wherever they happen to be sitting and to ignore what they are ruining. He provides no indemnity for this, nor does he seek permission from the owner of the house, nor yet privately asks forgiveness of Allah. And withal he considers it exorbitant that for his part he should put out ten dirhams per annum, but he doesn’t find it exorbitant that the owner of the house has laid out a thousand dinars on the purchase [of it]. Does he call to mind what the return is to me, paltry as it is, without recalling what comes to him in such great measure?
‘ “So – and the passage of days which unravel what is twisted tight, wear out the new, and separate all that is collected together, work on houses as they work on rocks, taking from dwellings what they take from all, dry and juicy, in the way they turn what is juicy into dry, what is dry into withered and what is withered into nothingness.
‘ “Dwelling houses have a short term [of life], and limited existence and it is their tenant who enjoys the benefit of them and advantage of their amenities. He is the one who takes the shine off their newness and takes away their [fine] appearance. Through him they become decrepit and through his bad management they lose their life. So when I compare the cost of restoring them when they become dilapidated, after once having started them, and the cost of repairing and putting them to rights between then [and now], then I set what I have received by way of income from them against that and the profit I have made through renting them, the loss incurred by the landlord is in direct ratio to the profit accruing to the tenant, except that the maintenance costs which I paid out were a lump sum whereas what I received by way of income came in by instalments. This is in addition to poor payment performance and the necessity to continue dunning [the tenant] for a long time – to say nothing of the lodger’s hatred of the landlord and the landlord’s love for his tenant – because the landlord desires the physical health of the tenant, a quick turnover if he be a merchant and active [market] in what turns out if he be a craftsman. The tenant’s dearest wish is that Allah distract the landlord from him in whatever way He will – by personal affairs, if He will, if He will, by current happenings, if He will, by imprisonment and, if He will, by death! The point upon which his wishes turn is that he be distracted from him – after which he doesn’t care how he is distracted, except that the more intensely it preoccupies him the more pleasant it is to him, the more appropriate he should feel secure and the better reason for him to feel at ease. Nevertheless, if his trade is slack or his products aren’t selling, he persists in demanding a reduction of the basic income [the landlord receives] and a rebate in the rent he gets. But if Allah bestows upon him profits in his business activities with a lively demand for his products, he doesn’t think to add a qirat to his obligations [to the landlord] or pay a copper before it falls due.”‘
Al-Jahiz, The Book of Misers, trans. Serjeant, pp. 68–71
COMMENTARY
According to R. B. Serjeant, zadw is a game which ‘seems to consist of hiding nuts or stones in pits and asking another player to guess “odds and evens”‘.
A tannur oven is a kind of baking oven, usually clay lined. It was quite common for the kitchen to be located on the roof.
The dinar is a gold coin, the dirham a silver coin and the qirat a fraction of a dirham.
In Chance or Creation?, Jahiz argues that the existence of God is deducible from the visible and tangible evidence of the created universe (rather like William Paley’s Evidences of Christianity (1794) in which the existence of God was proved from the appearance of design in natural phenomena). Although this is in the main a serious and reasoned exercise, every now and again comedy breaks in, as here:
Have you heard what is related about the dragon and the clouds? They say that clouds are given the task of snatching a dragon whenever they see one as a magnet attracts a piece of iron, so that it will not venture its head out of the ground for fear of clouds, and will emerge only rarely, when the sky is clear without a speck of cloud. Why were the clouds given the task of looking out for this animal and snatching it, if it were not to prevent it from harming people? If you object, ‘Why was this animal created at all?’ we answer, ‘To frighten people. It is like a whip to frighten suspicious characters, in order to discipline them and teach them a lesson.’
Jahiz, Chance or Creation?, trans. M. A. S. Abdel Haleem
(Reading, Berks., 1995), p. 57
Jahiz’s Kitab al-Tarbi' wa al-Tadwir, ‘The Book of the Square and the Round’, is a playful polemic directed against a contemporary who had claimed that good and natural things tended to be rounded in shape. Jahiz mocked the assumed learning of his opponent through the ironic massing of unanswerable questions. What bird is the phoenix? What was the original language of the world? Which is the longest-lived animal? Who or what were the parents of the phoenix? Why is the peacock’s tail coloured in the way that it is? And so on. (Jahiz here anticipates the quizzing of the seventeenth-century doctor in Sir Thomas Browne’s ‘Urne Burial’: ‘what song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture’.) Jahiz suggested that his antagonist’s prejudice in favour of roundness stemmed from the fact that he was a tubby man himself.
Jahiz’s writing had its critics. In the following century Badi ‘al-Zaman al-Hamadhani had his fictional mouthpiece, Abu al-Fath, denigrate Jahiz’s prose in these terms: ‘It consists of far-fetched allusions, a paucity of metaphors and simple expressions. He is tied down to the simple language he uses, and avoids and shirks difficult words.’
But Hamadhani’s opinion of the great essayist was not widely shared. Jahiz was described by his younger contemporary, Ibn Qutayba, as ‘the best stirrer-up of argument, the most articulate in raising the small and depreciating the great, who succeeds in doing both the thing and its opposite’. Abu Muhammad ‘Abd Allah ibn Muslim IBN QUTAYBA al-Dinawari (828–89), though born in Iraq, was of Persian stock; nevertheless, he defended the Arabs in the Shu’ubi controversy. He was a judicial official in Iraq before retiring to devote himself to literature and scholarship. He was the author of the Kitab Adab al-Katib, which may be tentatively translated as The Book of the Culture of the Scribe’, a rather earnest work offering guidance, mostly on philological matters, to scribes. His best-known work, the Uyun al-Akhbar (‘Sources of Narratives’), has already been cited in the first chapter with reference to the stereotypical sequence of themes in the Jahili qasida. (Ibn Qutayba was adamant that the particular sequence of themes he had listed was inviolate: ‘The later poet is not permitted to leave the custom of the ancients with regard to those parts [of the ode], so as to halt at an inhabited place or weep at a walled building, since the ancients halted at a desolate spot and an effaced vestige.’) The ‘Uyun was divided into ten books dealing with such broad themes as warfare, moral qualities, food and women. Essentially the work was a collection of anecdotes and poems from pre-Islamic times onwards which, however tenuously, were supposed to illustrate such themes. By reading literary anthologies like that produced by Ibn Qutayba, people who were neither descended from the Arab tribal aristocracy, nor from Persian dihqans, learnt about the culture of the elite.
What follows are wise sayings selected from the chapters on mental and moral qualities in the ‘Uyun al-Akhbar.
Men resemble their times more than their forefathers.
One says: If the people were
forbidden to crumble the dung of animals with their fingers, they would do it all the more, saying: ‘We have only been forbidden to do it, because there is something in it.’
One says: A man is very keen on what he has not attained.
The Persians say: Every difficult thing that lies within the faculty [of man] is easy.
They further say: Everything that can be done [easily] is considered tedious and thought of lightly.
Said a poet:
‘He became the keener on [her] love as she denied [it to him],
The thing most liked by a man being what he is deprived of.’
It is said: Men are [like] a watercourse or flocks of birds: One follows the other.
Kuthayyir says:
‘He who invents what is not of the nature of his soul
Will leave it, and his inborn disposition will triumph over him.’
Ibn al-A‘rabi recited to me [the following verse] of Dhu-1-Isba‘al-Adwani:
‘Every man returns one day to his true character,