Al-Jahiz and The Rise of Biological Evolutionism

"Although al-Nazzam made the first steps in the field of biological evolutionary thought in the history of science, for the first time the theory of biological evolution in its complete form was presented by a great early zoologist, al-Jahiz in the ninth century. He was the first to originate it. Al-Jahiz’s theory is an example of scientific revolution and innovation that has had reverberations into the farthest reaches of human thought. It is fair to say that many problems of the philosophy of Nature appeared in a new light after the revolution of al-Jahiz and his successors. Before describing al-Jahiz’s own views and his influence upon Muslim and European thinkers, especially upon Lamarck and Darwin, I want to give some biographical and bibliographical accounts." Mehmet Bayrakdar