Al-Jāḥiẓ on the senses: Sensory moderation and Muslim synesthesia

Christian Lange

doi:10.1080/17458927.2021.2020605

Al-Jāḥiẓ on the senses: Sensory moderation and Muslim synesthesia

Christian Lange

OFR - Islam and Arabic

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

The celebrated Iraqi littérateur, al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255 AH/869 CE), devotes a long section of his opus magnum, The Book of the Living, to the topic of “sensation among the various classes of living things.” His observations about the wondrous qualities of the human and animal sensorium are also found elsewhere in The Book of Living and in other of his works. This article traces al-Jāḥiẓ’s sensory theory in its epistemological and ethical dimensions, by pulling together key passages on the five senses from al-Jāḥiẓ’s oeuvre. The article argues that al-Jāḥiẓ develops a characteristic sensory style that is marked not so much by his desire to elevate sight above hearing, or human rationalism over animal sensualism, but rather by his erudite conoisseurship of the natural world and by his deep and measured appreciation of the phenomenon of synesthesia. Given al-Jāḥiẓ’s exalted status in Arabic literary history, his moderate sensory style constitutes an important paradigm on which later thinkers active in the Islamic world could build.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	22-36
Number of pages	15
Journal	Senses and Society
Volume	17
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2021.2020605
Publication status	Published - 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
I am grateful to the participants in the Utrecht Arabic Colloquium and my colleagues in the SENSIS project ( https://sensis.sites.uu.nl/ ) for reading and translating with me a portion of the chapter on sensation in al-Jāḥiẓ’s Book of the Living. This article was first presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (New Orleans, 14–17 November 2019); I thank those present, in particular Youshaa Patel, for their valuable feedback and suggestions. I wish to acknowledge the support of the ERC Consolidator Grant “The senses of Islam (SENSIS)” (project no. 724951) in the process of researching and writing this article. I also want to thank the two anonymous reviewers for suggesting valuable improvements for the argument and the translations in this article.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

Arabic literature
Islam
al-Jāḥiẓ
animals
epistemology
senses
synesthesia

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10.1080/17458927.2021.2020605Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Al J i on the senses sensory moderation and Muslim synesthesiaFinal published version, 1.59 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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Al-Jāḥiẓ on the senses: Sensory moderation and Muslim synesthesia

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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