Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded. Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī
The fundamental accusation against the peasants, however, and that which underlies and gives rise to all their other faults, is “their lack of intelligence and overwhelming ignorance” (§2.4)). This means, in its most basic form, that they are ignorant of everything but their immediate environment: “the only things a countryman knows are belts and cudgels, cows and plow-shaft pins, waterwheels and drover’s whips,” etc. (§2.3). From this follow more specific areas of ignorance—of refined foods (§3.8), of appropriate dress (idem), of the appropriate language to use in poetry (§5), of personal hygiene (§8.15), and of such urban institutions as the bathhouse (§3.11) and the latrine (§§3.40–41). Above all, they are ignorant of and indifferent to religion: “They gather in the mosques to calculate their taxes, but not one of them makes a prostration or says a prayer” (§2.7). Al-Shirbīnī illustrates this trait with no fewer than thirteen separate anecdotes describing peasants voiding their prayers through ignorance (§§3.63–76).
Significantly too, al-Shirbīnī points, in his summary of the peasant’s characteristics, not only to the former’s general turpitude but also to a specific animus against members of the author’s own class: “They have no mercy on a scholar / Only on those who practice evil and the oppressor” (§8.18).
The Rural Men of Religion “Rural fuqahāʾ” make up the second estate. These men are acknowledged as religious authorities by the peasants (§§4.22–23). The anecdotes give the impression that every village has one. Rural fuqahāʾ claim expertise in the fields of the Qurʾan (§4.18, §4.29, §4.30), jurisprudence (fiqh) (e.g., §4.20), and Tradition (ḥadīth) (§4.19, §4.24) and also provide services as judges (§4.31), preachers (§§4.10–12), and teachers of the Qurʾan to children (§4.15).
Rural fuqahāʾ are subjected to many of the criticisms that are directed against the peasant cultivator. Their associations, for example, render them stupid: “Similar [to the plowman, see §5.2.6] in terms of reduced intellect is the teacher of small children, for they are his companions all day long while all night long he is with women” (§5.2.7). Likewise, they are mocked for their uncouth appearance (one is described as “a man tall of stature, thick of leg, wearing a belt over a woolen wrap, with no shirt and no shoes on his feet, and on his head a huge turban of patent filthiness” (§4.3)).
The most important charge against the rural faqīh, however, is that he leads his flock into error through his flawed ʿilm, or knowledge of the religious and philological sciences and their methodology. The rural faqīh’s ignorance can, for example, result in his giving false interpretations of the Qurʾan (§4.1) and even in his making up new words for it (§4.18). It may result in his asking a bookseller for an “abridged version” of the Qurʾan for the use of his students (§4.15), and, through his misreading of a text, in leading his congregation in prayer while standing on one leg (§4.34). There is no indication of where the rural fuqahāʾ may have acquired this spurious learning.
Following one of these anecdotes, al-Shirbīnī comments, “I would add that it is because of such cases that they say, ‘Learning is a sacred trust’ and that a person should be allowed to speak only on the basis of thorough knowledge and wide reading, extreme caution with regard to what is fundamental in a question and what is secondary, and subjection of the process of transmission to critical examination; and that no attention should be paid to what the ignorant among the scholars may come up with” (§4.25). The rural faqīh, in other words, is a caricature of the true ʿālim. Highlighting the competition between “the ignorant among the scholars” and their properly trained urban counterparts, much of this section consists of anecdotes in which scholars, and especially Azhari scholars, best their rural rivals in contests of knowledge (§§4.3–33). In the conduct of this struggle, the ʿālim may have recourse to the authorities, as when an ʿālim “exerted himself to have this ignorant pastor leave the village … and they expelled him, on the authority of the emir of the village” (§4.33).
The Rural Dervishes (al-Khawāmis) Rural dervishes constitute the third estate of al-Shirbīnī’s rural society. Passages amounting to more than five thousand words devoted to the rural fuqarāʾ were omitted from the Bulaq and subsequent printed editions, reducing their presence in the work to a shadow of that in the original.46 The inclusion of this material in the present edition and translation reveals the magnitude of the importance al-Shirbīnī attributed to rural dervishes and the vehemence of his animosity towards them. As in the section on rural men of religion, tales of conflict between scholar and rural dervish constitute the greater part of al-Shirbīnī’s exposition.
One of the most striking features of al-Shirbīnī’s description of the “rural fuqarāʾ” is the prominence among them of a group he refers to as al-Khawāmis (“the Khawāmis”).
The term Khawāmis (literally, “fifths,” referring to ordinals, not fractions) appears to be unique to al-Shirbīnī and does not conform to the pattern of the names normally used to designate Sufi orders (al-Shādhiliyyah, etc.). Nevertheless, the description of the Khawāmis as “a sect that has been raised in the margins of the lands” (§7.1), an allusion earlier in the same passage to “the shaking of their caps” (hazz quḥūfihim), and the overall similarity of the language used to describe them to that used of the peasants (e.g., “they are like dumb animals” (§7.1)), place them squarely in the same geographical and social category as al-Shirbīnī’s country people, and it is clear that they were central to his picture of the countryside.
In addition to their wearing distinctive headwear, al-Shirbīnī’s country fuqarāʾ are distinguished by certain appurtenances, namely their “prayer beads and pitcher … their cockerel and fodder” (§7.1); they also carry crutches (§7.33) and wear a bonnet (zunṭ) (§8.24). They are described on occasion as shaving their beards (§7.38), they include women (§7.6), and they are accused of claiming that they have been relieved of the requirement to obey God’s commands (§7.3, §7.4, §7.7). Al-Shirbīnī holds them guilty of a variety of heretical beliefs (e.g., materialism (§7.34), reincarnation, the transmigration of souls (idem), and pantheism (§7.9)) and practices (sexual intercourse with women and boys during their ceremonies (dhikr) (§7.7) and prayers (§7.22) and a general propensity for fornication (§7.2), especially the seduction of young male novices (§7.21, §7.30, §7.38)). They practice charlatanism (§7.38), theft (§7.16), burglary (§7.31), murder (§7.7), and even cannibalism (§7.7). They roam the countryside, either with a single disciple (§7.16) or in groups (§7.38), and actively seek to recruit others, including the well-to-do, to their beliefs (§7.8). The tone of al-Shirbīnī’s treatment may be illustrated by his lines on a certain dervish who came to a bad end, to the effect that “He lived in vomit and foulness / And he died in shame and shite” (§7.10).
The reprehensible behavior of al-Shirbīnī’s rural dervishes parallels many of the practices mentioned in descriptions of various contemporary antinomian Sufi groups.47 The Muṭāwiʿah and the Malāmatiyyah were accused of pederasty and fornication,48 and the former also carried pitchers (see n. 425). The solitary retreat (khalwah), exploited by al-Shirbīnī’s shaykhs for nefarious purposes, was characteristic of the Khalwatiyyah order.49 There was also said to be a group in Upper Egypt who held pantheistic beliefs and acknowledged no recognized religion.50
However, the comprehensive nature of al-Shirbīnī’s attack on “rural fuqarāʾ” indicates that he was not concerned simply with their beliefs and practices; indeed, he sometimes accepts similar practices by individual Sufis with equanimity, as when he reports that a certain Shaykh Muḥammad al-Silsilī was “one of the saints who have attained esoteric knowledge, even though licentiousness and enjoyment of women appeared as his predominant characteristics,” adding the conventional justification for such behavior, namely, that it was “to disguise his mystical states” (§6.6). It is also noteworthy that, in al-Shirbīnī’s day, individuals whose behavior was either extremely eccentric (such as Shaykh Barakāt al-Khayyāṭ, whose tailor’s shop was filled with dead dogs, cats, and sheep51) or who flouted the most basic tenets of Islam