The difference between these licensed saints and the dervishes against whom al-Shirbīnī rails may have lain essentially in the latter’s strong organization, their hierarchies of leadership—al-Shirbīnī mentions that their leaders hold the power of life and death over their followers (§7.7)—and their apparently nomadic lifestyle. They appear, in these respects, to have differed from Sufis such as al-Matbūlī or al-Khayyāṭ, who lived on their own in cities; from those, such as the followers of al-Shaʿrānī, who lived in a zāwiyah (Sufi hostel); and indeed from the many, often educated, members of the recognized Sufi orders.53 As al-Shirbīnī has a dervish say in the poem (urjūzah) at the end of Part One, “No other Way (ṭarīqah) than this do I heed, / And my school’s either Saʿd or Ḥarām,” implying the dervishes’ rejection of the recognized Sufi orders in favor of clan-based social allegiances. The rural fuqarāʾ may thus have represented popular mass movements that were not susceptible to control and were therefore threatening.54
The hold of Sufism was particularly strong in the countryside: “In the later Middle Ages, the influence of normative Islam, as represented by the ʿulamāʾ, on the Egyptian countryside was practically nil. While, in the cities, the Sufis vied with the ʿulamāʾ in influencing the Muslim community, in the countryside they replaced them.”55 At the same time, “[the ‘new renunciation’] was not restricted in either social origin or appeal to ‘lower’ social strata …. There is certainly sufficient evidence to establish that these movements frequently recruited from the middle and higher social strata …. Socially deviant renunciation exercised a strong attraction on the hearts and minds of many Muslim intellectuals.”56 This appeal must have made them even more of a threat to the religious elite.
THE SATIRE ON RURAL LIFE
CONSTRUCTING A MORAL ECONOMY
Al-Shirbīnī takes pains from the outset of Brains Confounded to provide a moral framework to support his construction of the “people of the countryside.” It is by linking his subjects to the elements of that framework that he generates the authority needed to judge and condemn them.
THE REFINED AND THE COARSE
The moral economy invoked in Brains Confounded is defined by the opposition between refinement (or subtlety or grace) (laṭāfah or luṭf) and coarseness (or grossness or crudeness) (kathāfah), terms that are linked to the inhabitants of the book from the opening statement of themes. There, al-Shirbīnī proclaims the requirement to praise God because He “has distinguished the man of sound taste with refinement of form and sweetness of tongue, while bestowing on his opposites—the likes of the common people of the countryside … —wickedness of disposition and coarseness of nature” (§0.1).
This opposition between what is refined (laṭīf) and what is coarse (kathīf) continues throughout the book. In a chapter heading, the author promises to tell of things that befell certain common people of the countryside and give a description of “their vulgarity” (ṭabʿuhum al-kathīf) (§2.1). A simile used by a rural poet is condemned as a “coarse comparison” (tashbīh kathīf) (§5.8.3). Peasant names are grotesque, for it is a fact that “names point to the refinement (laṭāfah) or coarseness (kathāfah) of those who bear them …” (§2.13), and so on.
This moral polarity is reflected in geographical and social terms in the contrast between the countryside and its people on the one hand and Cairo and its people on the other. Cairo is both the city par excellence—as already noted, when peasants refer to “the city,” they mean Cairo (vol. 2, §11.37.2)—and the font of all that is refined. From al-Shirbīnī’s perspective, there is “no place like Cairo, / And no people like its people” (§8.44). He prays that God may protect it because it is “the city of conviviality and amusement, of pleasure and fulfillment, whose women God has distinguished by making them comely and handsome, full of loveliness and perfection, sweet in their social relations, refined in their conversations” (vol. 2, §11.37.2). The contrast is, of course, in Cairo’s favor: “God reward [the men of Cairo] for their doughtiness, granting them everlasting pleasure in their womenfolk and seasoning to perfection their togetherness, and God protect us from the countryside and its stupidities, the coarseness of its food and of its people’s proclivities!” (vol. 2, §11.12.6). In terms of literature, a “despicable comparison” made by a rural peasant (§5.6.12) is contrasted with “a witty simile referring to a refined beloved” penned by al-Shirbīnī himself (§5.6.13). In the first passage in the book in which he directly contrasts the urban and rural forms of an item of physical culture (in this case, the jubbah, a garment), al-Shirbīnī also explicitly links the urban religious and secular educated elites by remarking on their shared taste for the refined: “The urban sort is the one used by the people of the cities, especially scholars and sophisticates” (vol. 2, §11.2.16).
The fundamental nature of these associations is perhaps most clearly emphasized by the way in which they bridge the moral and physical universes. Thus, above, al-Shirbīnī speaks of the man who is distinguished by God with “sound taste … and sweetness of tongue” as being endowed also with “grace of person.” In contrast, of course, the peasant is distinguished not only by his “coarseness of nature” but also by his coarseness of form, as in the examples given. The full set of associations, as built up over the course of the book, consists of, on the “refined” side, religious knowledge, adherence to the norms of polite culture, eloquence (especially mastery of the techniques of formal poetry), good taste, physical beauty, and affective and mental refinement, and, on the “coarse” side, ignorance of true religion and heresy, deviance from the norms of polite culture, an inability to master the rules of versification, grotesque naming practices, grossness of physical form, and general boorishness and obnoxiousness.
THE IMMUTABILITY OF MAN’S INBORN NATURE
Al-Shirbīnī makes it plain that the categories “coarse” and “refined” are not only a result of one’s circumstances but determine them too, and as such are immutable.
Several axioms reinforce, explain, and rationalize the determinative nature of the dichotomy. One of these is the assertion that “like attracts like,” which occurs as a leitmotiv at various points in the book (§3.56, §5.2.16, §5.6.2). It is because like attracts like that coarseness of nature accompanies coarseness of behavior (and thus in turn coarseness of appearance, dress, food, etc.). Thus, for example, after dissecting the risible vulgarity of a peasant eulogy, al-Shirbīnī points out that “the peasant’s panegyric accords with his condition and is limited by it, and ‘like attracts like’” (§3.56).
Secondly, if the world is divided between the refined and the coarse and each must act accordingly, it is also the case, as al-Shirbīnī makes clear by prefacing his main topic with a series of anecdotes to this effect, that these God-given characteristics are immutable. A wolf cub, for example, rescued by a Bedouin and suckled by a ewe, turns on its foster mother one day and rips out her stomach, leading the Bedouin to ask a rhetorical question to which he has his own ready answer: “You were fed with her milk and raised among us, / So who told you that your father was a wolf? / When an inborn nature’s disposed to evil, /No teaching and no teacher is of use!” (§3.2). Similarly, on the human plane, the despicable behavior of a man “of low birth” (not specified as rural) is explained by his origins: his mother is “Murjānah, a black slave” (§3.5). Of direct relevance, a peasant taken from the fields by a king and provided with the finest education acquires great skill in divination by letters and by sand; however, when the king hides his ring in his hand and asks the peasant what it is, the man opines that, since it is round and has a hole, it must be a millstone. As the king’s vizier complacently notes, “his original nature won out,” for “Apples will never sprout from the twig / Of one whose roots are a sycamore fig” (§3.1).
Indeed, by a circular (and hence irrefutable) argument, only those who are “refined” by nature have the right of access to education and knowledge, while the coarse, such