Speech and Nature: al-Jāḥiẓ, Kitāb al-Bayān wa-l-tabyīn, 2.175–207, Part 2

This is the second part of a four-part study of al-Jāiʹs anthropology, as expressed in a substantial chapter (consisting of 184 akhbār) in his Kitāb al-Bayān wa-l-tabyīn. The first part, a translation of this chapter, appeared in Middle Eastern Literatures 11, no. 2 (2008) 169–91. The present part, a partial commentary, will be followed by the third and the fourth parts, which will offer interpretations of the various ways in which the speech–nature insight may operate, within al-Jāiʹs own branch of Mu‘tazilism and the early Kalām tradition generally.