Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded. Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī

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      This hierarchy is made most explicit in the repeated and pointed descriptions of the different recipes according to which various foods are prepared in the three different settings, for, as al-Shirbīnī states at the beginning of his discussion of stewed fava beans, “things are ennobled . . . by virtue of place” (vol. 2, §11.11.2). In dietary terms, this hierarchy is keyed largely to the amount of fat used. Thus, of mallow (khubbayzah), he says: “The people of the countryside take the leaves, chop them . . . and eat them. . . . The people of the villages on the river cook it with goose and chicken and so on, and the people of the cities cook it with fatty meats . . . and they add fats, clarified cow’s butter, greens, spices, and similar things, and this is the only way it should be eaten . . . . The way the country people do it . . . is worthless, and the same goes for the people of the villages on the river, for these . . . add no clarified butter or fat . . . . The latter is, nevertheless, more refined than the recipe of the country people referred to above. The best place to eat it, however, is in the cities . . . .” (vol. 2, §11.19.3). Similar comments are made in the case of slow-cooked fava beans, fava beans mashed with Jew’s mallow (bīsār), lentils, and rice pudding. In the latter case, al-Shirbīnī adds that “people of Turkish descent make it with milk alone, without water, and add just a little rice . . . this kind is the best tasting and most appetizing” (vol. 2, §11.25.2), thus placing the latter in a kind of supra-urban category.

      The Three Estates of al-Shirbīnī’s Rural Society

      The terms most frequently used in Brains Confounded to designate its subjects collectively are ahl al-rīf and al-rayyāfah, both meaning “the people of the countryside.” The presence in Part One of Brains Confounded of three sections devoted to anecdotes about, respectively, “the commoners of certain of the people of the countryside” (ʿawāmm baʿḍ ahl al-rīf) (§§2.9–3.76), their “men of religion” (fuqahāʾ) (§§4.1–4.41), and their “dervishes” (fuqarāʾ, i.e., mendicant Sufis) (§§7.1–7.41) indicates that al-Shirbīnī saw the people of the countryside as being divided into three estates, of roughly similar social, if not numerical, importance. Al-Shirbīnī attacks each of these estates separately, leveling against each specific charges of physical grossness and moral and cultural turpitude.

      The Peasant Cultivator

      As noted above, by “the commoners of certain of the people of the countryside” al-Shirbīnī means the peasant cultivators (fallāḥūn), especially those living in the hamlets and small villages away from the river. These are the people who “spend all their time with the plow and the shovel-sledge and shaking their caps around the threshing floors, or rushing about in the swamps and the fields, or bustling around after the crops, or jumping about harvesting and reaping,” etc. (§2.3). They are stigmatized by association; for example, al-Shirbīnī notes of the plowman (who, according to him, belongs to a particularly benighted subgroup of peasants) that “his companions by day are oxen and by night are women; consequently his mental capacities never become completely formed” (§5.2.6). They are also mocked for unprepossessing physical attributes: “Their pubic hair’s so long it twists as it grows” (§8.8); “The back of his neck had turned black from the heat, his feet were chapped from walking barefoot and from the cold” (§3.1); “His ass, from wear and tear, shows many a scar” (§8.8). The peasant is also taken to task for specific cultural practices: the making of a public spectacle of the bride at the ceremony called “the Showing” is described as “one of their foulest deeds and most wretched ways” (§2.24). Further charges leveled against the peasant include internecine fighting (“war and stubborn confrontation arise among them and villages are ruined at their hands” (§2.3)), bad management of land and livestock (vol. 2, §11.6.6), indebtedness (idem), flight from the land (idem), and even the residual use of Christian religious formulae after conversion to Islam (§3.64). Furthermore, their women are “hyenas” (§2.22) and their children “apes” (§2.21) and “lunatics” (§2.7). In general, “the natures of the people of the countryside . . . are revolting and seek only what is revolting” (vol. 2, §11.17.2), or, as the author puts it even more pithily elsewhere, they are “shit born of shit” (§5.7.7).

      The fundamental accusation against the peasants, however, and that which underlies and gives rise to all their other faults, is “their lack of intelligence and overwhelming ignorance” (§2.4)). This means, in its most basic form, that they are ignorant of everything but their immediate environment: “the only things a countryman knows are belts and cudgels, cows and plow-shaft pins, waterwheels and drover’s whips,” etc. (§2.3). From this follow more specific areas of ignorance—of refined foods (§3.8), of appropriate dress (idem), of the appropriate language to use in poetry (§5), of personal hygiene (§8.15), and of such urban institutions as the bathhouse (§3.11) and the latrine (§§3.40–3.41). Above all, they are ignorant of and indifferent to religion: “They gather in the mosques to calculate their taxes, but not one of them makes a prostration or says a prayer” (§2.7). Al-Shirbīnī illustrates this trait with no fewer than thirteen separate anecdotes describing peasants voiding their prayers through ignorance (§§3.63–3.76).

      Significantly too, al-Shirbīnī points, in his summary of the peasant’s characteristics, not only to the former’s general turpitude but also to a specific animus against members of the author’s own class: “They have no mercy on a scholar / Only on those who practice evil and the oppressor” (§8.18).

      The Rural Men of Religion

      “Rural fuqahāʾ” make up the second estate. These men are acknowledged as religious authorities by the peasants (§§4.22–4.23). The anecdotes give the impression that every village has one. Rural fuqahāʾ claim expertise in the fields of the Qurʾan (§4.18, §4.29, §4.30), jurisprudence (fiqh) (e.g., §4.20), and Tradition (ḥadīth) (§4.19, §4.24) and also provide services as judges (§4.31), preachers (§§4.10–4.12), and teachers of the Qurʾan to children (§4.15).

      Rural fuqahāʾ are subjected to many of the criticisms that are directed against the peasant cultivator: their associations, for example, render them stupid: “Similar [to the plowman, see §5.2.6] in terms of reduced intellect is the teacher of small children, for they are his companions all day long while all night long he is with women” (§5.2.7). Likewise, they are mocked for their uncouth appearance (one is described as “a man tall of stature, thick of leg, wearing a belt over a woolen bisht, with no shirt and no shoes on his feet, and on his head a huge turban of patent filthiness” (§4.3)).

      The most important charge against the rural faqīh, however, is that he leads his flock into error through his flawed ʿilm, or knowledge of the religious and philological sciences and their methodology. The rural faqīh’s ignorance can, for example, result in his giving false interpretations of the Qurʾan (§4.1) and even in his making up new words for it (§4.18). It may result in his asking a bookseller for an “abridged version” of the Qurʾan СКАЧАТЬ