Sorting life: classification

This lesson asks you to describe the distinguishing characteristics of different groups of organisms and to use those characteristics to classify the organisms further with a classification system. The museum offers one account: how al-Jahiz divided animals into groups in Kitab al-Hayawan; the scientific classification system your class learns has to come from another source. ¹

Choose four living things from the schoolyard or from pictures. Write two features that tell each one apart, then split them into two groups using one feature, then split each group using a second feature. Did the groups change when you changed the first feature?

Look for a living thing that does not fit its group neatly by the feature you chose. What will you do with it, and what extra feature do you need?

At the end of each volume the editor of the Beirut edition gives a list of al-Jahiz's chapters, from which the course of Kitab al-Hayawan can be followed ². The fifth part, in the third volume, includes the birds that live in people's houses, scorpions and mice, lice, fleas and gnats, the spider, the bee, the tick, the bustard, sheep and goats, frogs, locusts and sandgrouse ^{3 4}. The sixth includes the dabb lizard and its marvels, hares, the hyena, hedgehog and jerboa ⁵.

Al-Jahiz says that he does not dwell on the great-bodied for their size, and that wisdom may show more plainly in the fly, small as it is, than in the splendid horse; what he seeks is "what is most marvellous, most telling in wisdom, and most indicative to the common people of the Lord's wisdom" ^{6 7}. In the seventh part the editor lists a chapter on "what is taken from animals as evidence of the beauty of God's making" ⁸.

A book called "Animals" sounds like a list of animals. Its editor, Muhammad Basil 'Uyun al-Sud, says the title suggests a book confined to animals, while it contains sciences and learning larger than its title, all laced with humour; in his words it is "a collection of books gathered in one book" ^{9 10}.

Al-Jahiz says that in this he follows the names established and known among the people of his language, singling out what they single out and grouping what they group, and that the bat is reckoned among birds though featherless ¹¹. If you were asked to place a bat in a group today, which feature would you put first, and why might someone else choose another feature?

• Kitab al-Hayawan: the seven parts chapter by chapter, and how the editor describes the book.
• al-Jahiz: what the Encyclopaedia of Islam says of his life, and where the sources differ on the year of his birth.
• Hayawan: how the Kuwaiti Encyclopaedia of Fiqh defines an animal and sets it apart from a creeping creature, a beast and grazing livestock.

Draw al-Jahiz's division from the card "Walk, fly, swim or creep" as a tree: animals and plants, then animals that walk, fly, swim or creep. Add your four living things to the tree and note where you hesitated over one of them.