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Les catégories zoologiques dans le Kitāb al-ḥayawān d’Al-Ğāḥiẓ (776-868)

Ahmed AARAB

fr Anthropozoologica 55 (19) - Pages 269-277

Published on 18 December 2020

This article is a part of the thematic issue Appréhender les catégories zoologiques dans les sociétés du passé

Zoological categories in the Kitāb al-ḥayawān of Al-Ğāḥiẓ (776-868)

This article is part of the zoological categorizations as established in the classical Arab works. We focused in particular on the Kitāb al-ḥayawān of Al-Ğāḥiẓ. This zoological categorization mainly benefited from the contributions of classical Arab lexicographers, who gleaned a mass of zoological information drawn from Arab nomads. Analysis of Kitāb al-ḥayawān shows that problems of ambiguity in zoological names attracted the attention of Al-Ğāḥiẓ. The latter was led to dissect each of these problems and to give answers that are still relevant today.


Keywords:

Arabic zoology, Islamic zoology, animal classification, zoological categorization.

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