AL-JAHIZ
(Abū ʿUthman ʿAmr ibn Baḥr al-Kinānī al-Baṣrī | Abu Uthman Al-Jahiz)
What is particularly interesting about this passage is that a Middle Eastern contemporary historian and commentator compared circumstances to political events with the Umayyads and the Abbisids to those in Persia and Rome. Chosroes (Khosrow) was a Persian King who had his brothers murdered, and Caesar was viewed as a tyrant. Even then, the history of politics, in one country influenced events and attitudes in others,
The Zanj were what the Arabs called Black Africans. His grandfather was an East African Black man. Intermarriage between Arabs and Black Africans was common until the arrival of Islam which did not allow intermarriage between Muslims and others.
Abū ʿUthman ʿAmr ibn Baḥr al-Kinānī al-Baṣrī, commonly known as al-Jāḥiẓ was an Arab prose writer and author of works of literature, Mu'tazili theology, zoology, and politico-religious polemics.
