the requirement to praise God because He “has distinguished the man of sound taste with refinement of form and sweetness of tongue, while bestowing on his opposites—the likes of the common people of the countryside . . . —wickedness of disposition and coarseness of nature” (§0.1).
This opposition between what is refined (laṭīf) and what is coarse (kathīf) continues throughout the book. In a chapter heading, the author promises to tell of things that befell certain common people of the countryside and give a description of “their vulgarity” (ṭabʿuhum al-kathīf) (§2.1). A simile used by a rural poet is condemned as a “coarse comparison” (tashbīh kathīf) (§5.8.3). Peasant names are grotesque, for it is a fact that “names point to the refinement (laṭāfah) or coarseness (kathāfah) of those who bear them . . .” (§2.13), and so on.
This moral polarity is reflected in geographical and social terms in the contrast between the countryside and its people on the one hand and Cairo and its people on the other. Cairo is both the city par excellence—as already noted, when peasants refer to “the city,” they mean Cairo (vol. 2, §11.37.2)—and the font of all that is refined. From al-Shirbīnī’s perspective, there is “no place like Cairo, / And no people like its people” (§8.44). He prays that God may protect it because it is “the city of conviviality and amusement, of pleasure and fulfillment, whose women God has distinguished by making them comely and handsome, full of loveliness and perfection, sweet in their social relations, refined in their conversations” (vol. 2, §11.37.2). The contrast is, of course, in Cairo’s favor: “God reward [the men of Cairo] for their doughtiness, granting them everlasting pleasure in their womenfolk and seasoning to perfection their togetherness, and God protect us from the countryside and its stupidities, the coarseness of its food and of its people’s proclivities!” (vol. 2, §11.12.6). In terms of literature, a “despicable comparison” made by a rural peasant (§5.6.12) is contrasted with “a witty simile referring to a refined beloved” penned by al-Shirbīnī himself (§5.6.13). In the first passage in the book in which he directly contrasts the urban and rural forms of an item of physical culture (in this case, the jubbah, a garment), al-Shirbīnī also explicitly links the urban religious and secular educated elites by remarking on their shared taste for the refined: “The urban sort is the one used by the people of the cities, especially scholars and sophisticates” (vol. 2, §11.2.16).
The fundamental nature of these associations is perhaps most clearly emphasized by the way in which they bridge the moral and physical universes. Thus, above, al-Shirbīnī speaks of the man who is distinguished by God with “sound taste . . . and sweetness of tongue” as being endowed also with “grace of person.” In contrast, of course, the peasant is distinguished not only by his “coarseness of nature” but also by his coarseness of form, as in the examples given. The full set of associations, as built up over the course of the book, consists of, on the “refined” side, religious knowledge, adherence to the norms of polite culture, eloquence (especially mastery of the techniques of formal poetry), good taste, physical beauty, and affective and mental refinement, and, on the “coarse” side, ignorance of true religion and heresy, deviance from the norms of polite culture, an inability to master the rules of versification, grotesque naming practices, grossness of physical form, and general boorishness and obnoxiousness.
The Immutability of Man’s Inborn Nature
Al-Shirbīnī makes it plain that the categories “coarse” and “refined” are not only a result of one’s circumstances but determine them too, and as such are immutable.
Several axioms reinforce, explain, and rationalize the determinative nature of the dichotomy. One of these is the assertion that “like attracts like,” which occurs as a leitmotiv at various points in the book (§3.56, §5.2.16, §5.6.2). It is because like attracts like that coarseness of nature accompanies coarseness of behavior (and thus in turn coarseness of appearance, dress, food, etc.). Thus, for example, after dissecting the risible vulgarity of a peasant eulogy, al-Shirbīnī points out that “the peasant’s panegyric accords with his condition and is limited by it, and ‘like attracts like’” (§3.56).
Secondly, if the world is divided between the refined and the coarse and each must act accordingly, it is also the case, as al-Shirbīnī makes clear by prefacing his main topic with a series of anecdotes to this effect, that these God-given characteristics are immutable. A wolf cub, for example, rescued by a Bedouin and suckled by a ewe, turns on its foster mother one day and rips out her stomach, leading the Bedouin to ask a rhetorical question to which he has his own ready answer: “You were fed with her milk and raised among us, / So who told you that your father was a wolf? / When an inborn nature’s disposed to evil, /No teaching and no teacher is of use!” (§3.2). Similarly, on the human plane, the despicable behavior of a man “of low birth” (not specified as rural) is explained by his origins: his mother is “Murjānah, a black slave” (§3.5). Of direct relevance, a peasant taken from the fields by a king and provided with the finest education acquires great skill in divination by letters and by sand; however, when the king hides his ring in his hand and asks the peasant what it is, the man opines that, since it is round and has a hole, it must be a millstone. As the king’s vizier complacently notes, “his original nature won out,” for “Apples will never sprout from the twig / Of one whose roots are a sycamore fig” (§3.1).
Indeed, by a circular (and hence irrefutable) argument, only those who are “refined” by nature have the right of access to education and knowledge, while the coarse, such as the peasants, are incapable of rising above the condition into which they were born and hence have no right to higher things. Indeed, encouraging them to think otherwise is both pointless and dangerous: “And among the sayings of the Imam ʿAlī, God be pleased with him, we find, ‘Do not instruct the children of the rabble in knowledge, for if they learn, they will seek high office, and if they attain that, they will devote themselves to the humiliation of the noble.’ And the Imam al-Shāfiʿī, God be pleased with him, has said: ‘To bestow knowledge on the ignorant is to waste it / And to deny it to the deserving is unjust’” (§3.4). This philosophy is, of course, self-serving: things must be so if the inferior status of the people of the countryside, and thus their exploitation, is to be justified. “Appropriateness” or “consistency” thus becomes not simply a fact of life but also a principle to which appeal is often made (“if it be asked . . . where is the appropriateness of the comparison . . . we would say” (§5.8.3)). In the final analysis, “appropriateness is required” (§5.5.13).
The Transformational Power of Immutability
The transformational power of the principle that man’s character is determined at birth and immutable is so great that it can determine the nature, and thus the acceptability of, any behavior. Al-Shirbīnī devotes considerable space, for example, to farting as a characteristic behavior of country people and one that confirms their coarseness. On the other hand, in one anecdote, a fart delivered by a refined person turns out to be a veritable social coup: a youth, who is “comely of person, refined of personality” puts to flight, with an inadvertent fart, “a bunch of those whose persons are coarse and natures gross.” Al-Shirbīnī assuages the youth’s embarrassment with a verse to the effect that the boy has cleverly saved the situation by showing his disdain for the “people of coarseness and disagreeableness” with a “delicate sound (laṭīf lafẓ), like honey.” In other words, it is not what is done that matters but who does it: from the refined all things are refined and to the refined all things are forgiven. The converse is equally true: a peasant praised by
