al-Bayan wa-l-Tabyin (Eloquence and Exposition)

Al-Bayan wa-l-Tabyin ("Eloquence and Exposition") is a book by Abu 'Uthman 'Amr ibn Bahr al-Jahiz. Its editor 'Abd al-Salam Muhammad Harun calls it "the most widespread and most circulated of Abu 'Uthman's books" and says many men of letters were trained by it. ⁶ Al-Jahiz opens it by seeking refuge in God from the temptation of speech as from the temptation of action, from affecting what one cannot do well, and from sharp-tongued prattle as from inarticulacy and tongue-tied speech. ⁷

The editor quotes Abu Hilal al-'Askari in al-Sina'atayn, who calls it the largest and best known of the books on rhetoric and full of benefit, though the definitions of eloquence and the divisions of bayan are "scattered through its folds" and found only by long reflection; Ibn Rashiq in al-'Umda, who says al-Jahiz made a book "whose excellence cannot be matched"; and Ibn Khaldun, who heard from his teachers that the foundations of the science of letters are four books: Adab al-Katib by Ibn Qutayba, al-Kamil by al-Mubarrad, al-Bayan wa-l-Tabyin by al-Jahiz and al-Nawadir by Abu 'Ali al-Qali. ^{6 8}

The editor says it was al-Jahiz's habit to follow his own bent without a fixed plan, beginning one question, leaving it for another and coming back to it, and that al-Jahiz was aware of this and sometimes apologised, as when he says of the chapter on bayan that it should have come at the start of the book "but we placed it later for a certain purpose". ^{8 4} Thus at the end of the first part he promised to answer the Shu'ubiyya's attack on the use of the staff (mikhsara), then opened the second part by saying he had meant to begin with that but preferred to head it with words of the Prophet ﷺ, the early generations and the Successors, and he kept his promise only at the start of the third part. ^{9 10 5}

The editor groups the book's discussions under these headings: bayan and eloquence, rules of rhetoric, oratory, poetry, rhymed prose, the doctrine of the middle way, testaments and letters, the sayings of ascetics, preachers and their stories, and assorted rhetorical selections. ⁹ He notes that al-Jahiz defined bayan, set out the kinds of signification by word, gesture, finger-counting and state, wrote chapters in praise of the tongue, compared the speech of commoners, townspeople and Bedouin, praised the soundness of the Bedouin's language in his day, discussed the accent of Nabateans and Byzantines, and gave in the second part a chapter on solecism and those who committed it. ⁹

• The chapter on bayan: al-Jahiz defines bayan as "a comprehensive name for everything that removes the veil from meaning and tears the screen before what is in the mind", makes "understanding and making understood" the heart of the matter, and counts five kinds of signification: word, gesture, finger-counting ('aqd), writing and state (nisba). ^{11 4}
• Defects of speech: he tells the story of Wasil ibn 'Ata', who lisped badly on the letter r and set out to drop it from his speech until he managed it in debate and disputation, and he describes the kinds of lisp on r. ^{12 13 14}
• The treatise of Bishr ibn al-Mu'tamir: al-Jahiz preserves the text of the treatise that Bishr ibn al-Mu'tamir handed to the young men whom the orator Ibrahim ibn Jabala was teaching, one of the oldest surviving pieces on the craft of speech. ^{15 16}
• The Book of the Staff: the third part opens with "Kitab al-'Asa", which begins with the doctrine of the Shu'ubiyya and those who call themselves the people of equality, and their attacks on Arab orators for holding a staff, leaning on bows and staves and wearing turbans at assemblies. ^{5 17}

After Bishr's treatise al-Jahiz comments that he has never seen a better way in eloquence than that of the secretaries (kuttab), who sought words neither rugged and outlandish nor low and vulgar; he then explains that when he speaks of commoners he does not mean peasants, craftsmen and traders, nor distant nations, but the class of people of his own religion and language who have not reached the rank of the elite. ¹⁸ In the same passage he divides the nations worth mentioning into four, the Arabs, Persians, Indians and Byzantines, and describes the rest in terms that reflect the outlook of his age. ¹⁸

The editor, citing Yaqut, says that al-Jahiz dedicated al-Bayan wa-l-Tabyin to the judge Ahmad ibn Abi Du'ad, as he dedicated al-Hayawan to the vizier Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Malik al-Zayyat and al-Zar' wa-l-Nakhl to Ibrahim ibn al-'Abbas al-Suli, and that each gave him five thousand dinars. ² He relates that al-Jahiz was close to Ibn al-Zayyat and estranged from Ibn Abi Du'ad, that he fled when Ibn al-Zayyat was arrested, and was then brought in chains to Ibn Abi Du'ad, with whom he had an exchange after which the judge was reconciled to him and drew him close; from this the editor concludes that the book appeared only after 233 AH, the year Ibn al-Zayyat was killed. ³

The editor says the book was a rich mine for major authors: Ibn Qutayba in 'Uyun al-Akhbar, al-Mubarrad in al-Kamil, Ibn 'Abd Rabbih in al-'Iqd, al-'Askari in al-Sina'atayn, al-Husri in Zahr al-Adab, Ibn Rashiq in al-'Umda, 'Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani in Dala'il al-I'jaz and Asrar al-Balagha, and Usama ibn Munqidh in Lubab al-Adab. ^{19 2}

The editor quotes Yaqut that the book exists in two recensions, "a first and a second, and the second is more correct and better", and says he found that the Köprülü manuscript is the most correct of the copies, containing passages found in no other, while the remaining copies are twins that rarely differ from one another. ^{3 20} He notes that al-Jahiz divided his book into three parts, as he states at the beginning of the second and third, and that he used four manuscripts: the Köprülü copy in photographs at the Egyptian National Library (siglum «ل»), dated Muharram 684 AH; two copies of the Egyptian National Library («ب» and «ج»); and a copy of the Taymuriyya library. ^{20 21} For the second edition he collated a fifth manuscript from the Feyzullah library in Istanbul (siglum «ه»), in Andalusian script, copied from the copy of Abu Dharr al-Khushani, itself copied from that of Abu Ja'far al-Baghdadi, written in Rabi' al-Akhir 347 AH. ²²

The editor lists the earlier printings: the first at al-Matba'a al-'Ilmiyya in 1311-1313 AH in two volumes, edited by Hasan al-Fakihani and then Muhammad al-Zuhri al-Ghamrawi, without vowel marks; the second in three volumes at the al-Futuh and al-Jamaliyya presses in 1332 AH, supervised by Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib; the third and fourth by Hasan al-Sandubi in 1345 and 1351 AH; besides selections printed at the al-Jawa'ib press in 1301 AH and in Jerusalem in 1933. ^{23 24} Harun says he began the edition after finishing al-Hayawan, that his friend 'Abd al-Salam Muhammad al-Nazir shared the printing costs, so he dedicated the edition to him, and he dates his introduction 16 August 1948. ^{24 25} The copy used here is the seventh printing by Maktabat al-Khanji, 1418 AH / 1998. ²⁶