Brains confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf expounded. Volume one / by Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī ; translated by Humphrey Davies ; foreword by Youssef Rakha ; volume editors, James E. Montgomery, Geert Jan van Gelder.

Originally published in hardback in 2016.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

In English with orginal Arabic text.

Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Yusuf al-Shirbini's Brains Confounded pits the "coarse" rural masses against the "refined" urban population. In Volume One, al-Shirbini describes the three rural "types"--Peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion, and rural dervish--offering anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, and criminality of each. In Volume Two, he presents a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day, with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Abu Shaduf, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirbini responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire with digressions into love, food, and flatulence. Volume Two of Brains Confounded is followed by Risible Rhymes, a concise text that includes a comic disquisition on "rural" verse, mocking the pretensions of uneducated poets from Egypt's countryside. Risible Rhymes also examines various kinds of puzzle poems, which were another popular genre of the day, and presents a debate between scholars over a line of verse by the tenth-century poet al-Mutanabbi. Together, Brains Confounded and Risible Rhymes offer intriguing insight into the intellectual concerns of Ottoman Egypt, showcasing the intense preoccupation with wordplay, grammar, and stylistics and shedding light on the literature of the era

Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on December 21, 2020).

Frontmatter -- Letter from the General Editor -- Contents -- Foreword. -- Introduction -- Note on the Text -- Notes to the Introduction -- In the Name of God The Merciful, the Compassionate To Whom We Turn for Help -- The Author Describes the Ode of Abū Shādūf -- The Author Embarks on a Description of the Common Country Folk -- An Account of Their Escapades -- An Account of Their Pastors and of the Compounded Ignorance, Imbecility, and Injuries to Religion and the Like of Which They Are Guilty -- An Account of Their Poets and of Their Idiocies and Inanities -- It Now Behooves Us to Offer a Small Selection of the Verse of Those Who Lay Claim to the Status of Poets but Are in Practice Poltroons, and Who Make Up Rhymes but Are Really Looney Tunes -- An Account of Their Ignorant Dervishes and of Their Ignorant and Misguided Practice -- Urjūzah Summarizing Part One -- Notes -- Index -- About the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute -- About the Translator -- The Library of Arabic Literature

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