Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded. Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī
هزّ القحوف بشرح قصيد أبي شادوف
يوسف الشربينيّ
المجلّد الثاني
Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded
Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī
Volume Two
Edited and translated by
Humphrey Davies
Volume editors
James E. Montgomery
Geert Jan van Gelder
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
Table of Contents
Letter from the General Editor
Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded, Part Two
The Ode of Abū Shādūf with Commentary
Some Miscellaneous Anecdotes with Which We Conclude the Book
Let Us Conclude This Book with Verses from the Sea of Inanities
Glossary
Bibliography
Further Reading
Index
About the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute
About this E-book
Titles Published by the Library of Arabic Literature
About the Editor–Translator
Library of Arabic Literature
Editorial Board
General Editor
Philip F. Kennedy, New York University
Executive Editors
James E. Montgomery, University of Cambridge
Shawkat M. Toorawa, Cornell University
Editors
Julia Bray, University of Oxford
Michael Cooperson, University of California, Los Angeles
Joseph E. Lowry, University of Pennsylvania
Tahera Qutbuddin, University of Chicago
Devin J. Stewart, Emory University
Editorial Director
Chip Rossetti
Digital Production Manager
Stuart Brown
Associate Managing Editor
Gemma Juan-Simó
Letter from the General Editor
The Library of Arabic Literature series offers Arabic editions and English translations of significant works of Arabic literature, with an emphasis on the seventh to nineteenth centuries. The Library of Arabic Literature thus includes texts from the pre-Islamic era to the cusp of the modern period, and encompasses a wide range of genres, including poetry, poetics, fiction, religion, philosophy, law, science, history, and historiography.
Books in the series are edited and translated by internationally recognized scholars and are published in parallel-text format with Arabic and English on facing pages, and are also made available as English-only paperbacks.
The Library encourages scholars to produce authoritative, though not necessarily critical, Arabic editions, accompanied by modern, lucid English translations. Its ultimate goal is to introduce the rich, largely untapped Arabic literary heritage to both a general audience of readers as well as to scholars and students.
The Library of Arabic Literature is supported by a grant from the New York University Abu Dhabi Institute and is published by NYU Press.
Philip F. Kennedy
General Editor, Library of Arabic Literature
هزّ القحوف بشرح قصيد أبي شادوف
المجلّد الثاني
Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded
Part Two
١،٩
9.1بسم الله الرحمٰن الرحيم
(الحمد لله) ربّ العالمين * والصلاة والسلام على سيّدنا محمّد أشرف النبيّين * وعلى آله وصحبه أجمعين * (وبعد) فيقول العبد الفقير إلى الله تعالى يوسف بن محمّد بن عبد الجواد بن خضر الشربينيّ كان الله له ورحم سلفه إنّه لمّا كانت الهمّة البارده * والفكرة الكاسده * تحرّكت أيّامًا قلائل * لتأليف كتاب صار في الأوراق حاصل * في أحوال أهل الريف باتّفاق * وما لهم من نظم ونثر وحبّ واشتياق * وصار جزءًا لا يُرى في الكثافة له شبيه * ولا يكترث به ذو فضل في العلوم نبيه * وكان كالمقدّمة للقصيد * وقد حوى معاني تشبه قحوف الجريد * وخُتِمَ بالأرجوزة الحاوية لما فيه من النثر والأشعار * وغايته أنّه اغتراف من بنات الأفكار * أردت اتّصاله بهذا الجزء الثاني * وحلّ معاني القصيد الّتي عليه مدار تلك المباني * فحرّكتُ فكرتي الخامله * وأطلقتُ عِنان اليراع لبيان تلك الأمور الحاصله * لحلّ معاني نظم القصيد * منسكبًا عليه انسكاب الوابل على الصعيد * بألفاظ يفوح معناها كريح الفَسْوى * ومعاني تشبه في الوضع خابط عَشْوى * فساعدتني الفكرة لما إليه قصدت * وتحرّكت معي لما إليه أردت * وهذا أوان الشروع في المقصود * بعون الملك المعبود * فأقول
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds, and blessings and peace upon our master Muḥammad, noblest of prophets, and upon his family and companions, one and all! To proceed. The humble slave of the Almighty, Yūsuf ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Jawād ibn Khiḍr al-Shirbīnī declares (and may God be for him and have mercy on his forebears): after frigid determination and sluggish lucubration had bestirred themselves for a few days and been constrained to produce a book that’s now on paper contained, on the conditions of the people of the countryside as it may be, and on their love and longing and their prose and poetry, which work became a Part in coarseness without peer, to which no man of virtue and discerning scholarship would ever give ear, which was to serve as an introduction to the coming Ode, which motifs like the prickly ends of palm fronds included and with an urjūzah—a summary of all that’s in it of poetry and prose—concluded and which, to cut the story short,