One of the most complex figures in classical Arabic literature, al-Jahiz was a polymath who incorporated every field of intellectual inquiry into his own essayistic and compilatory literary form. He has been credited as a foundational prose stylist for the Arabic literary tradition, as well as the first contributor to Arabic literary theory and criticism. In this class, we will examine a variety of his works, from short epistles to excerpts of his longer works. Part of the analytic process will be to reconstruct the polemical context in which these works were written, and thus readings will be selected to illuminate his relationship to contemporary discourses, such as law, theology, Quran interpretation, logic, dialectic, and poetry.