Life and Food in the Seventeenth Century | Illustration of an Egyptian Peasant

Al-Shirbini, a minor ‘alim or religious scholar is an obscure character who lived and worked in Damietta, one of the main cities of the Egyptian Delta, during the second half of the seventeenth century. His historical record Brains Confounded By the Ode of Abu Shaduf Expounded?, dating back to the 1680s, offers an account of food and drink. He even divides the population between peasant and city dwellers. The lowest category are the peasants of the hamlets bordering small tributaries and river marshes. Abu Shaduf belongs to this last group. Al-Shirbini reserves particular ire and contempt for the rural religious functionaries and Sufi dervishes and sheikhs, who are depicted as ignorant, superstitious, and avaricious.

For more, see Sami Zubaida's article 'Confounding the Brain' from Rawi magazine's Issue 10 available online (link in details).