Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded : : Volume Two / / Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī; ed. by Humphrey Davies.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Complete eBook-Package 2016
• VerfasserIn: al-Shirbīnī, Yūsuf,
• HerausgeberIn: Davies, Humphrey,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2016]; ©2016
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Library of Arabic Literature ; 57
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

Unique in pre-20th-century Arabic literature for taking the countryside as its central theme, Yusuf al-Shirbini’s Brains Confounded combines a mordant satire on seventeenth-century Egyptian rural society with a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day.In Volume One, Al-Shirbini describes the three rural “types”-peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion and rural dervish-offering numerous anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, illiteracy, lack of proper religious understanding, and criminality of each. He follows it in Volume Two with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Abu Shaduf, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes and bewails, above all, the lack of access to delicious foods to which his poverty has condemned him. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirbini responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire of the ignorant rustic with numerous digressions into love, food, and flatulence.Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Brains Confounded belongs to an unrecognized genre from an understudied period in Egypt’s Ottoman history, and is a work of outstanding importance for the study of pre-modern colloquial Egyptian Arabic, pitting the “coarse” rural masses against the “refined” and urbane in a contest for cultural and religious primacy, with a heavy emphasis on the writing of verse as a yardstick of social acceptability.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Letter from the General Editor -- Table of Contents -- Part Two -- An Account of the Lineage of the Poet and Its Components -- His Lineage -- His Village -- The Shape of His Beard -- The Origins of His Good Fortune in His Early Days and How Fate Came to Turn Against Him -- The Ode of Abū Shādūf with Commentary -- Says Abū Shādūf . . . -- Me, the lice and nits . . . -- And none has harmed me . . . -- And more inauspicious than him . . . -- And from the descent of the Inspectors . . . -- And on the day when the tax collectors come . . . -- And I flee next to the women . . . -- Almost all my life on the tax . . . -- And on the day when the corvée descends . . . -- And nothing has demolished me . . . -- And nothing has made me yearn . . . -- Happy is he who sees bīsār come to him . . . -- Happy is he who sees a bowl . . . -- Happy is he to whom comes a basin . . . -- Happy is he who gobbles energetically . . . -- Happy is he who drinks a crock . . . -- Happy is he to whom mussels come . . . -- If I see next to me one day a casserole . . . -- When shall I see mallow . . . -- When shall I see grilled beans . . . -- When shall I see that he’s ground the flour . . . -- Ah how good is vetch-and-lentils . . . -- Ah how fine is toasted bread . . . -- And I’ll sit with one knee crooked . . . -- Happy is he who finds himself next to rice pudding . . . -- Happy is he who fills his cap with a moist little cheese . . . -- Happy is he who sees his mother’s bowl full . . . -- And I’ll sit down to it with ardor . . . -- Now I wonder, how is milk . . . -- Now I wonder, how is flaky-pastry . . . -- Should I see the bowl of the son of my uncle . . . -- Me, my wish is for a meal of fisīkh . . . -- Happy is he who has seen in the oven . . . -- And made faṭāyir cakes . . . -- Happy is he who sees a casserole . . . -- Happy is he who sees in the refuse dump . . . -- If I live I shall go to the city . . . -- And I’ll steal from the mosque . . . -- And I’ll get me a felt cap . . . -- And by me will sit . . . -- And I’ll rejoice in the throng . . . -- And I close my ode with blessings . . . -- Some Miscellaneous Anecdotes with Which We Conclude the Book -- Let Us Conclude This Book with Verses from the Sea of Inanities -- Notes -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Further Reading -- Index -- About the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute -- About the Typefaces -- Titles Published by the Library of Arabic Literature -- About the Editor–Translator