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 (§§4.3–4.33). 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 (such as ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī’s mentor Ibrāhīm al-Matbūlī, whose conduct “gave much cause for criticism on both religious and moral grounds” and who was suspected of pederasty52) were tolerated as “natural saints” (majādhīb) or “men of divine states” (arbāb aḥwāl). As such, they were patronized and consulted by members of the ruling elite and regarded with (wary) respect by leading religious figures.
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 ulama, on the Egyptian countryside was practically nil. While, in the cities, the Sufis vied with the ulama 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
