Yusuf al-Shirbini, Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abu Shaduf Expounded.

• Author: Guo, Li
• Position: Risible Rhymes - Book review

Yusuf al-Shirbini, Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abu Shaduf Expounded. Edited and translated by HUMPHREY DAVIES. 2 vols. Library of Arabic Literature. New York: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016. Pp. Iviii + 425; viii + 541. $40 each.

Muhammad ibn Mahfuz al-Sanhuri, Risible Rhymes. Edited and translated by HUMPHREY DAVIES. Library of Arabic Literature. New York: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016. Pp. xiv + 105. $30.

The two books under review have much in common. In the former, a monumental two-volume tome titled Hazz al-quhuf bi-sharh qasid Abi Shaduf, translated as "Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abu Shaduf Expounded," Yusuf al-Shirbini (fl. ca. 1046-1111/1636-1700), a sometime bookseller in Upper Egypt, ridicules what he sees as his countrymen's stupidity and ignorance by way of a commentary on a poem attributed to one Abu Shaduf. The latter, a much thinner booklet with a mouthful of a title, Kitab Mudhik dhawi l-dhawq wa-l-nizdm fi hall shadhara min kalam min ahl al-rif al-'awamm (The Book to Bring a Smile to the Lips of Devotees of Taste and Proper Style through the Decoding of a Sampling of the Verse of the Rural Rank and File, simply translated as "Risible Rhymes"), attributed to another virtually unknown poet from Upper Egypt and composed around the year 1058/1648, explores a potpourri of "rural" poetry. Parodying the classical verse-and-commentary genre, both shed significant light on the contemporary literary culture and society in rural Ottoman Egypt, displaying an intense preoccupation with wordplay, grammar, and stylistics. The seemingly odd obsession with grammar, of all things, certainly has to do with the authors' siting, a salon (majlis) where men of culture (ahl al-adab) in rural areas gathered and paraded their literary knowledge. The results were this kind of peculiar and oftentimes strange text where two reasonably well-versed men poke fun at the coarse mannerisms, in life and writing, of their fellow peasant poet-wannabes, showing off their supposedly refined verbal skills, along with their intimate insights into various facets of country life.

Brains Confounded is unarguably the weightier of the two, comprising nearly 1,000 pages worth of raucous and digressive discourse. In volume one, the author begins his assault on the country folks with "their names, nicknames, their women during intercourse, and their weddings." He then moves on to their "escapades"; their pastors' "ignorance, imbecility, and injustice to Religion"; their poets and "their idiocies and inanities," with extensive quotes; and the "ignorance and misguided practices of their dervishes (Sufis)." Volume two...