The first book in a new series edited by Wen-chin Ouyang and Julia Bray, In Praise of Books takes on one of the giants of Classical Arabic literature and the “father of Arabic prose”, al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/868–9). The work forms the first of a two-volume project by the author on al-Jāḥiẓ's attitudes towards books, which range “from glowing adoration to profound mistrust and outright rejection” (p. 5). The volume currently under review deals al-Jāḥiẓ's praise of books, which is most prominently displayed in his magnum opus, Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, the Book of Animals, or the Book of Living, as Montgomery prefers to interpret its title (cf. pp. 9–10). To see al-Jāḥiẓ as merely praising books, however, is to understate the matter. As Montgomery argues, al-Jāḥiẓ saw in books in general, and in his Book of Living in particular, the potential to save a society in decline.

Written in an “apocalyptic” age (towards the mid third/ninth century), of which even al-Jāḥiẓ's ugliness seems to have been a sign (!) (p. 29), Montgomery argues that there was a particular sense of urgency to save the morally corrupt and riven ʿAbbāsid society before the coming of the End Time (ch. 1.1). The logic, as Montgomery delineates in Parts 4 and 5, is as follows: in order to bring back cohesion to the fragmented society, al-Jāḥiẓ needed to find a common principle on which all would agree. This basic principle is that “life as a product of creation necessitates a creator whom we should celebrate out of gratitude for the blessings He has showered upon us” (p. 265). This obligatory celebration and appreciation of God (agreed upon by all except the Eternalists, the Dahrīya, the century's “atheists”, p. 277) takes place in two forms: by writing an account of God's creations (5.3) and doing so through the proper use of the Arabic language (5.2).

God's creations, from the most despicable creatures to the most admired, are all signs of His majesty. The world is thus a “semiotic system” to be read and interpreted, and humans (who are themselves signs) have the unique intellectual capacity to do so (pp. 270–1). The process of “composing” (taʾlīf) a book, and the Book of Living in particular, is a way to interpret and assemble these disparate “signs” in one aggregate whole of the author's own “creation”. The result is a seemingly haphazard “kaleidoscopic” account in the case of the Book of Living, which is nevertheless not without its internal organizational micro-schemes (pp. 333–9). Al-ʿArabīya, in turn, had to be mastered and used properly since it was the language which God had chosen to communicate His message. Montgomery points out how both endeavours imply a desire to imitate God: Writing “the book of the book of creation” (p. 387) mimics God's divine governance of His creation; doing so in al-ʿArabīya mimics His divine language. While this seems to come close to violating the Muʿtazilite aversion to anthropomorphism, Montgomery reassures us that it was an attempt “to draw near to God yet not make himself like God” (p. 360).

The problem with such a totalizing encyclopaedic mission is that it is bound to remain incomplete. Al-Jāḥiẓ's Book of Living, however, is not an “encyclopaedia” in the modern sense of an ordered, systematic compilation of knowledge for easy retrieval (p. 266). Rather, Montgomery suggests that al-Jāḥiẓ aims to teach his readers “the correct interpretations of the signs which his treatise contains and so to establish for them the mechanisms whereby all the signs not contained in his treatise can in turn be successfully interpreted” (p. 273). In this way, al-Jāḥiẓ solves the problem of incompleteness through providing “an interpretative key to the signs” (p. 273).

Montgomery explores what this “interpretative key” might entail through an analysis of the work's roughly 200-page “Introduction”, which seems to have been added to the work at a later stage, as it addresses criticisms already voiced against the book (p. 169). The identity of the Addressee remains a mystery, although Montgomery provides a compelling, though speculative, possibility in 4.3. The Addressee's primary target of attack is first, al-Jāḥiẓ's Book of Living, then his other books, and finally the book in general, as an artifact (Part 3). Al-Jāḥiẓ's defence of books consists of highlighting its praises, including that they promote social wellbeing by suppressing factionalism, through replacing competitive debate with solitary study (p. 166). However, “at the heart of the disagreement between al-Jāḥiẓ and the Addressee […] lies a fundamental disparity over how to classify things” (p. 255). While the Addressee is concerned with “pure categories” and is suspicious of hybrid (p.168), al-Jāḥiẓ “erects taxonomies in order to take delight in collapsing them” (p. 170). Another “interpretative key” presented by al-Jāḥiẓ is that there are “two characteristics by which things are judged”: one is “apparent to the senses”; the other is “hidden away for the reasoning intellect” (p. 406). A seemingly frivolous debate presented in the “Introduction” about the Dog and the Rooster, therefore, contains hidden within it a debate about human autonomy and moral obligatedness (Part 6).

In Praise of Books is not an easy read, as the author himself acknowledges on various occasions. While some of the difficulty is unavoidable, the book would have benefitted from some more signposts for the reader, such as clarifying upfront the purpose of certain discussions. The translation of extensive sections of the “Introduction” and the paraphrase of much of its remaining parts are in themselves tremendous contributions to the field. The page numbers referring to the original text in Arabic could have been placed in the margins rather than at the end of paragraphs for easier scanning. The “Commentary” and the “Argument” sections in Part 3 have the reader cumbersomely flipping back to the “Translation”. Notwithstanding these organizational matters, the book is a must-read for any student of Arabic literature. It not only gives the reader tools with which to read and interpret al-Jāḥiẓ's works, but it also paints an impressively expansive picture of third/ninth-century intellectual life in Iraq.