From:
http://www.grouporigin.com/clients/qatarfoundation/chapter2_6.htm
Natural selection and evolution
Al Jahiz formulated an early theory of natural selection based on observing animals like the tiny mosquito
Perhaps some of the most prescient breakthroughs in early Arab-Muslim science were the theories of the Iraqi thinker and writer Al Jahiz, considered the father of modern evolutionary theory. Though his data were more limited and his theory less well defined than Darwin's, considering that he was working more than 1,000 years before Darwin should win him extra recognition.
He is said to have come to the House of Wisdom in 816 during the rule of Al Mamun, and won a post there, where he remained for 50 years. Although he was accomplished in poetry, philology, philosophy, and literature, it was in biology and zoology that he made his most powerful mark.
Al Jahiz's work The Book of Animals seems to have been the first documented attempt to explain the evolution of species as impacted by their environment and the struggle for survival. Key passages from the book included his observations on natural selection of species:
"Animals engage in a struggle for existence: for resources, to avoid being eaten, and to breed. Environmental factors influence organisms to develop new characteristics to ensure survival, thus transforming into new species. Animals that survive to breed can pass on their successful characteristics to offspring."
He seems to have given us the most detailed early description of food chains in nature:
"The mosquitoes go out to look for their food, as they know instinctively that blood is the thing which makes them live. As soon as they see the elephant, hippopotamus, or any other animal, they know that the skin has been fashioned to serve them as food... all animals, in short, cannot exist without food, neither can the hunting animal escape being hunted in his turn."
He also gave an early theory of environmental determinism:
"It is so unusual that its gazelles and ostriches, its insects and flies, its foxes, sheep and asses, its horses and its birds are all black. Blackness and whiteness are in fact caused by the properties of the region, as well as by the God-given nature of water and soil and by the proximity or remoteness of the sun and the intensity or mildness of its heat."
Although the first, Al Jahiz was not the last Arab or Muslim to look at natural selection. Ibn Al Haytham wrote a book in which he argued for evolutionism (although not natural selection), and other Muslim thinkers such as Ibn Miskawayh, the Brethren of Purity, Al Khazini, Abu Rayhan Al-Biruni, Nasir Al Din Tusi and Ibn Khaldun, discussed these ideas. Translated into Latin, these works filtered into Europe and could have had an influence on Darwinism.
