Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded. Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī
Probative quotations (shawāhid) are also used, as is standard in sharḥ, to lend authority to the commentator’s statements. Not all of these are themselves opprobrious or ridiculous. The use of a well-known quotation such as that attributed dubiously by al-Shirbīnī to Maʿn ibn Zāʾidah—“We are a tribe whom the wide-eyed pupil / Melts . . .” (§5.2.13)—for instance, relies for its comic effect simply on the incongruity of its occurrence in the context of a verse in the course of which the beloved declares “I’m off for a crap.” Others, albeit obscene or playful, may be quotations from contemporary poets whose wit the author admires and may be used for their congruity with the matter at hand (as, e.g., “I saw a leper deep down in a well” (§5.2.16)). Still others, however, seem to be invented simply to make fun of the implied tendency of some commentators to use shawāhid to say in verse what they have just said in prose, e.g., (following discussion of the etymology of the words in question (§5.5.4)):
Khabṭ from khubāṭ derives
And ḍarṭ from ḍurāṭ likewise.
Perhaps the weightiest of the conventions of commentary that al-Shirbīnī puts to comic use is the heuristic rhetorical debate in which the author first poses and then responds to and dismisses an objection to an argument he has put forward earlier. Al-Shirbīnī usually refers to such a passage as a “debate” (masʾalah), which he generally characterizes as “silly” (habāliyyah), though he sometimes uses the opening “If it be said . . .” (fa-in qīla . . .) or a variant, a wording that led to the technique being named fanqalah. A typical “silly debate” occurs in the author’s discussion of a metaphorical usage of the phrase “cutting out” as used to refer to the action of the lover’s fingers in removing (figuratively) his heart from his breast: “Why does he talk of ‘cutting out’ with the fingers, rather than with a knife or a razor, given that it is of the nature of cutting that it should be done with a sharp instrument and, the heart being flesh, cutting it with the fingers or the fingernails would not work?” We reply: “The fatuous response is . . .” (§5.5.14); for an example of fanqalah, see §5.5.12.
The Logical Absurdities of Grammar
The notion that the relationship between the real world and grammar was not arbitrary seems to have been commonplace in al-Shirbīnī’s time. There is no reason to think that he is being humorous when he says that a certain Sufi shaykh (of whom he approves) is “by nature attracted to the feminine, to the extent that he would eat only from a zubdiyyah (‘bowl’) [and] drink only from a qullah (‘water pitcher’)” (§6.6) (these words being grammatically feminine), or that a man would describe his wife as being “so modest that she covers her face from the moon [qamar, grammatically masculine] and from everything else [grammatically] masculine” (§7.31).
This is taken to an extreme, however, when al-Shirbīnī first contends, for example, that all lice are female because the word qamlah (“louse”) is grammatically feminine and then uses this argument to explain that the louse cannot jump because “the louse . . . is . . . female, and the female is weaker than the male” (vol. 2, §11.2.3). Similarly, he implies elsewhere that, because the word liḥḥīs (a sort of vermin) is related through their common root to the word laḥīs, and because the latter may be coupled with the word taʿīs (“miserable”) in the phrase taʿīs laḥīs (for which al-Shirbīnī gives various meanings, all unpleasant), the creatures known as liḥḥīs are themselves rendered more harmful (vol. 2, §11.2.2). Likewise, al-Shirbīnī contends that there is “a certain appropriateness” to the fact that the written word kishk (“groats formed into balls”) reads as a palindrome in Arabic because “their bottoms are just like their tops, and the beginning of each piece of kishk is the same as its end” (vol. 2, §11.10.11).
In such absurd applications of grammar to life, al-Shirbīnī probes the limits of linguistic logic in pursuit of comic effect, propelling himself into a world where grammar is fundamental and life incidental; that is, where life imitates grammar. While the reader may laugh, he can also hardly fail to notice the intrinsic absurdity of such arguments, which may, in turn, lead him to question the sanity of the discipline in whose name they are produced.
Subversion versus Affirmation
The tendency of the techniques described above to make textual commentary itself appear comic raises the possibility that al-Shirbīnī actually intended to subvert the genre and the literary culture from which it grew. Other elements in the work also point in that direction.
On occasion, for instance, al-Shirbīnī seems nonchalant toward the very process of commentary. Thus, baṭṭāṭ (“to pat out”) is derived “from baṭbaṭa . . . or from biṭaṭ . . . or, quite possibly, from sheer stuff and nonsense” (vol. 2, §11.21.5). It may also be significant that three of the “miscellaneous anecdotes” that make up the penultimate section of the book concern the absurdities into which pedantry can lead grammarians (vol. 2, §§12.7, 12.8, 12.12).
At the same time, however, al-Shirbīnī appears to disclaim any subversive intent by applying to his commentary descriptors such as “silly” (habālī) (as noted above), “facetious” (fashrawī) (§5.8.20, vol. 2, §11.4.8, etc.), or “lame” (fushkulī) (§5.3.10).
Al-Shirbīnī’s attitude to the implications of his parody of textual commentary thus appears ambiguous, though affirmation of its validity as a genre, and of the validity of the assumptions that underpin it, predominate.
It remains for me to acknowledge the help that I have received in preparing this revised edition and translation of al-Shirbīnī’s Brains Confounded, and the edition and translation of al-Sanhūrī’s Muḍḥik dhawī l-dhawq, which will be published separately. Without the goodwill of the executive editors of the Library of Arabic Literature, headed by General Editor Philip F. Kennedy, the enterprise would never have gotten off the ground. It was kept in that position by the generous help and input of, first and foremost, Geert Jan van Gelder, who read the work in both languages and made numerous corrections, suggestions, and improvements; further invaluable assistance was provided by James Montgomery. I was also fortunate to have the input of my Cairo colleague Ahmed Seddik, who helped me to unravel many of the complexities of Risible Rhymes, of Noah Gardiner, who made an assessment of the manuscript of the latter, and of Adam Talib. Last, but by no means least, I benefited from the unfailing support of Stuart Brown, Gemma Juan-Simó, and, above all, Chip Rossetti, all of the New York office of the Library of Arabic Literature.
Note on the Text
The present edition of the Arabic text is a revised version of that published in 2005, which was based on a stemma developed from a review of eight manuscripts and the first printed edition (Bulaq 1274/1858).71
The 2005 edition established a text that differed significantly from that of the then-available printed editions. Most importantly, from the perspective of content, it restored several passages found in all the manuscripts but missing from the Bulaq edition. The longest of these, in the section on rural dervishes, or fuqarāʾ, (§§7.1–7.29 and §§7.31–7.32 in the present edition), is over five thousand words; without the passage, this section is notably shorter in the Bulaq edition than the sections on peasant cultivators (fallāḥūn), and rural pastors/teachers (fuqahāʾ). The restoration of these passages redresses this imbalance and allows us to see more clearly the importance that al-Shirbīnī attributed to the role of dervishes on the rural stage and the vehemence of his animosity towards them. Also restored in the 2005 edition are the last twenty-nine lines of the poem, in rajaz meter, with which Part One ends.
The 2005 edition also omits several passages found only in the Bulaq edition and consisting largely of quotations taken from the mainstream jurisprudential, historical, polite-letters (adab), and classical-verse traditions; these appear to have been inserted in a pietistic or didactic spirit and often have little relevance to their context.
Finally, at the level of language, the 2005 edition appears more rough-hewn