“Then there are the Transmigrationists,” Hadia read. “The school arose among some Sufis, who use the concept of tanasukh to argue for metempsychosis. They claim the modern al-Jahiz is a reincarnation of the first. But it’s considered heretical, denounced by the ulama and even the majority of Sufis. Most of its followers today are Buddhist or Hindu. There’s a festival for it in Bengal.”
Heretical or not, ideas of al-Jahiz reborn were widespread, and not just among unorthodox Sufis. Despite it being dismissed as some rural custom, you could easily find Cairenes who said the same.
“There are about a dozen more schools about his origins.” Hadia lifted up several sheets. “The Sufis in Soudan think he’s a herald of the Mahdi. Some Copts see him as a harbinger of Armageddon. None make any more sense than the other.”
“They don’t have to. Al-Jahiz’s ambiguity lends itself to interpretation.”
“People define him how they want.” Hadia caught on. “So, an imposter…”
“… never has to get specific,” Fatma finished. “That crowd last night. They saw al-Jahiz in that man in the gold mask. Never mind if they all had different ideas of who he was. Al-Jahiz is so wrapped up in myth and rumor, he can be whoever they want him to be.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“Why the Ministry takes men claiming to be al-Jahiz seriously. He’s not the first. But they’re always trouble, because of what they stir up in people. People willing and wanting to believe. Even when they’re half-mad.”
“Did this one look that way? Half-mad, I mean?”
Fatma shook her head, remembering those eyes. Intense, yes. But nothing about them looked mad. “So we know what we don’t know about al-Jahiz. How about what we do know?”
Hadia shuffled her notes again, lifting out another page. “The first mention of al-Jahiz is usually given to al-Hajj Umar Tal, the later conqueror and founder of the Tukulor Empire. In 1832 he was a wandering mystic. On his way back from hajj, he meets Ibrahim Basha, then a military commander on campaign in Syria. Umar Tal healed the future basha’s son of an affliction before famously prophesying the coming of a man he claimed would shake up the world. He called him by the title ‘the Master of Djinn.’”
Fatma recalled what the old man in the crowd had said. The Master of Djinn—one of al-Jahiz’s famous honorifics.
“It’s thought that around this time the man who would become al-Jahiz was part of the basha’s Soudanese regiment, made up of slave soldiers. Some even claim he was sent with a battalion to Mexico to put down a rebellion against Napoleon III in the 1860s. But that sounds like another rumor. Because by then he’s no longer in the Egyptian army. He appears for the first time with the title ‘al-Jahiz’ in 1837 in Soudan, preaching against slavery in the company of a tall mysterious figure—that most people now think was a djinn.”
“Eighteen thirty-seven,” Fatma echoed. She picked up a book, flipping to what she wanted. “The same year of the Egyptian-Abyssinian border skirmish, after tax collectors kidnapped an Ethiopian Coptic priest in Soudan. The Abyssinians handily defeated the local Egyptian garrison, freeing the priest. The survivors claimed the Abyssinians used ‘sorcerous weaponry.’”
“Al-Jahiz vanishes from all accounts for thirty-two years,” Hadia picked up. “Then, in 1869, inexplicably arrives in Cairo. Starts teaching alchemy and what he calls the ‘lost arts,’ performing some of the first ‘great wonders.’ His secret street schools start gaining followers.”
“Then in 1872, Isma’il Basha annexes Abyssinian territory, starting a war,” Fatma read.
“Which we lose, again,” Hadia added. “In just two days! This time people pay attention to soldiers talking about magic. Those years al-Jahiz was missing, it’s now thought he was in Abyssinia, following in the steps of the Prophet—peace be upon him. Likely the source of their weaponry.”
“Which the Abyssinians won’t confirm one way or the other,” Fatma groused. It was confounding why the monarchy was so secretive. There was a treaty between them now, and no hostilities in decades. Then again, Abyssinian rulers also kept live lions wandering about their palaces—which reportedly had the ability to speak. So maybe that wasn’t the oddest thing.
Hadia flipped through her notes before tapping an area with a pen. “After the 1872 war, Isma’il Basha learns about al-Jahiz and has him arrested as a traitor. But al-Jahiz wins him over with his teachings. The Khedive sets him up in Abdeen Palace to work his experiments. That’s where he makes most of his machines and transcribes his many books. It’s also where ‘it’ happens.”
Fatma didn’t need a primer. Every first year in the Ministry knew the story. Of how al-Jahiz built some grand machine of alchemy and magic. Of the day the entire palace was engulfed in light, that made the stone seem to warp and shimmer. Back then people had called it the work of the Khedive’s Soudanese sorcerer. Today, it was remembered as the boring into the Kaf, the weakening of the barriers between the many realms that forever changed the world.
“No one knows why he did it,” Hadia read. “Curiosity, mischief, malice. But the science has never been replicated.”
Fatma held her tongue, eyes wandering to the vault behind the swinging pendulum. That wasn’t precisely true. Al-Jahiz’s grand formula—the Theory of Overlapping Spheres—had been replicated exactly once, through a machine built by the angel Maker. He called it the Clock of Worlds. Maker had sought to use his invention to bring about the end of their world, until she and Siti destroyed it. The files on that case remained sealed to most. And what remained of the clock now sat only feet away in the vault, where the Ministry housed its most precious secrets.
“Over the next few months,” Hadia continued, “djinn begin appearing in small numbers
