@shayla__love & #39;s well-meaning article seems to be premised on an equally well-meaning tweet of Prof. Higham, who takes his info from a dubious, albeit peer-reviewed, article published in a journal whose editors didn& #39;t know to whom to send it for review https://twitter.com/nyuprimatology/status/1309162680134119424">https://twitter.com/nyuprimat...
Unfortunately, the Vice and the peer-reviewed articles contain numberous misconceptions that could have been avoided if an Arabist or medievalist were consulted. Iโ€™ll focus on three that seem to be persistent on Internet but that originate in the 19th cent (more on that later)...
#1. The ๐พ๐‘–๐‘ก๐‘Žฬ„๐‘ ๐‘Ž๐‘™-๐ปฬฃ๐‘Ž๐‘ฆ๐‘Ž๐‘ค๐‘Žฬ„๐‘› (Eng. The Book of Living Things) of al-Jฤแธฅiแบ“ is not a work zoology or biology. It is a literary bestiary. Jฤแธฅiแบ“ is a Muสฟtazilฤซ theologian and an accomplished belletrist. He wrote his แธคayawฤn a compendium of stories, anecdotes, ...
maxims, and poems that organized under the rubric of animals. In terms of genre and content, it resembles, for example, the ๐‘ƒโ„Ž๐‘ฆ๐‘ ๐‘–๐‘œ๐‘™๐‘œ๐‘”๐‘ข๐‘  and its medieval successors.
#2. The Arabo-Islamic scholars mentioned in these articles are heirs to Hellenistic tradition and ...
its views on nature, much like the medieval scholars of Latin Christendom and Byzantium. Ideas depicted as precursors to Darwin in these articles are, in fact, a part of the reception history of Aristotelian concepts like the โ€œladder of natureโ€ and ...
the Neoplatonists& #39; โ€œChain of Beingโ€, which were popular among monotheists at least as early as Philo of Alexandria (fl. 1st cent. BCE). The views of Jฤแธฅiแบ“ no more resemble Darwin than does, say, those of Thomas Aquinas.
...
#3. The peer-reviewed article contains many howlers that a competent Arabist would spot immediately. Most egregious is the discussion of ๐‘š๐‘Ž๐‘ ๐‘˜โ„Ž (ุงู„ู…ุณุฎ), meaning โ€œmetamorphosisโ€. This idea has more to do with theology than biology...
In fact, it has a qurสพanic pedigree: the Qurสพan speaks of God punishing the wicked โ€“ especially Jewish violators of the Sabbath โ€“ by transforming them into baser creatures, such as apes and pigs. This has about as much to do with evolution as Kafkaโ€™s ๐‘€๐‘’๐‘ก๐‘Ž๐‘š๐‘œ๐‘Ÿ๐‘โ„Ž๐‘œ๐‘ ๐‘–๐‘ ...
For more on this idea of maskh, I recommend Michael Cook& #39;s article, "Ibn Qutaybah and the Monkeys" https://www.jstor.org/stable/1596085 ">https://www.jstor.org/stable/15...
Many (strained) attempts to connect Darwinian ideas to the luminaries of classical and medieval Arabic literature derive from the fascinating story of the reception of Darwin& #39;s writings in the Arab world. On this subject, I strongly recommend: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Reading_Darwin_in_Arabic_1860_1950/3xBJAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover">https://www.google.com/books/edi...
Apologies for all the typos!
More detailed treatment discussion: https://twitter.com/tafsirdoctor/status/1314563684283420673">https://twitter.com/tafsirdoc...
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