Jahiz's Methods in Presenting Historical Reports

By searching through Jahiz's work, his methods of determining the authenticity of reports can be obtained as a set of general rules. Proposing the rule of "Tab", he believes that people innately possess a sense of general and universal acceptance towards a certain matter. This innate universal acceptance can be a good criterion and standard to determine the correctness of historical reports. He also believes that if there is consensus about a report, there would be no room for any further interpretation or explanation regarding that report. He believes to understand and critique a hadith; relevant time and place, the context of revelation, the method of relator's reporting, and the requisites of the environment in which the hadith has been transmitted should all be taken into consideration in order to verify the original historical report.In this article, following a brief introduction of Jahiz and his In this article, following a brief introduction of Jahiz and his works, the most significant principles and rules applied by him in history-writing are evaluated.