Książka jest pierwszym obszernym studium poświęconym zjawisku tatfil - pieczeniarstwa - odzwierciedlonym w średniowiecznej literaturze arabskiej do XI wieku. Omawia to zagadnienie w trzech różnych aspektach: językowym, literackim i społeczno-kulturowym. Postać tufaylego, tytułowego intruza, to jeden z toposów adabu, literatury dydaktyczno-rozrywkowej. Przeprowadzone na tekstach źródłowych badania przedstawiaj ą proces kształtowania się motywu nieproszonego gościa w literaturze i umożliwiaj ą dokonanie opisu jego funkcjonowania jako członka społeczeństwa kalifatu. Studia leksykograficzne uzupełniaj ą ten wizerunek, pokazując bogactwo terminów stosowanych na określenie pieczeniarzy, tym samym obrazują skalę zjawiska w średniowiecznym świecie arabskim. Praca stanowi ważny etap badań wiodących do poznania nie tylko średniowiecznej prozy arabskiej, lecz także struktury społecznej i kultury abbasydzkiego kalifatu.

Tufaylī was a sponger, an uninvited guest who used to break into private parties, usually weddings, and eat the food which was intended for those who were invited. He is also a hero of the anecdotes of adab literature. The character appears in the Arabic medieval literature, especially adab encyclopaedias, in two main fixed contexts. These contexts are formed as a set of diverse minor topics. The first one consists of all the problems connected with food i.e. different kinds of meals, table manners, rules of diet, and the second concerns various human imperfections like avarice, foolishness, dishonesty or the groups of human-beings which made up the colourful caliphate society – false prophets, burglars or people who talk too much. Some of these topics are obligatory, some of them less important. The role of some of them is didactics and moralizing while the others are only to entertain. The ṭufaylī topic is one of the constitutive part which create the full subject of the context and it is not obligatory and its role is to entertain. The presented monograph is the first comprehensive work which deals with question of ṭufaylī considering it in three different aspects: linguistic, literary and socio-cultural. The research has been carried out on adab works created up to XIth century, i.e. the century when the only original preserved work on spongers was written – al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī’s Kitāb at-taṭfīl wa-ḥikāyāt aṭ-ṭufayliyyīn wa-aḫbāruhum wa-nawādir kalāmihim wa-ašcāruhum. Part One: Linguistic aspect - The term ṭufaylī appears in the literature since the Muslim period, this word was not known in ğāhiliyya period though the phenomenon of eating somebody’s food and drinking somebody’s drink was mentioned in pre-Islamic poetry. Classical Arabic dictionaries point out the word wāġil, which also appears in ğāhiliyya, to designate a person who used to drink somebody’s drink, and it was usually wine (ḫamr or nabīḏ). They also denote the word wāriš which was used to name a person who ate somebody’s food, but the word was not found in ğāhiliyya poetry. The phenomenon of taṭfīl was probably frequent during the pre-Islamic period as well as the Umayyad and Abbasid, which is proved by the number of synonyms for example rāšin, lacmaẓ, lucmūẓ. The term ṭufaylī is the substantive adjective constructed from the diminutive of the word ṭifl “a child” and this diminutive form tufayl served as a proper name as early as ğāhiliyya. The eponym of ṭufaylīs was a certain tufayl, mentioned in sources, who lived in Kufa and used to attend wedding parties in search of food. The oldest testimony of him is given by al-Ğāḥiẓ on the authority of Abū-l-Yaqzān. This Abū-l-Yaqzān was cĀmir ibn Ḥafs who died according to Ibn al-Nadīm in 786/787 or according to Yāqūt in 806 A.D. Some verbs were derived from the term ṭufaylī - ṭaffala and tṭaffala, as well as an adjective, found in dictionaries but not in adab literature, ṭiflīl, which determine a person (rağul ṭiflīl) who attends the parties without an invitation. Part Two: Literary aspect - Al-Ğāḥiẓ was the first adīb to create the work which is supposed to contain the anecdotes exclusively about ṭufaylīs Kitāb aṭ-ṭufayliyyīn, but it has not survived. Al-Ğāḥiẓ’s Kitāb al-bayān wa-t-tabyīn contains the oldest anecdote about uninvited guest, while the others – Kitāb al-ḥayawān and Kitāb al-buḫalā’ give only some remarks about the group. The only original preserved work totally dedicated to the subject is al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī’s Kitāb at-taṭfīl. The study shows how the ṭufaylī motive had been developing during the two centuries and the canon of the most popular anecdotes has been created. The canon is formed of ten anecdotes and one hadis which appear at least three times in sources used in the research. The most typical forms used to tell about the uninvited guest according to sources are the nādira and the ḫabar. The next step was to determine the anecdote for the ṭufaylī subject and the attempt to give the clear definition of the nādira and the ḫabar. The ṭufaylīs in adab literature are rather uniform as literary characters. They are greedy, clever and cunning and these features had not been changed since their first appearance in adab works. This proves that this type of character was established in oral accounts not in written sources. The anecdotes about spongers were spread by the professional story-tellers and jesters who sometimes acted as real ṭufaylīs creating their legend. The book contains some biographies of those men like tufayl al-Arā’is, Ibn Darrāğ, Ašcab or Bunān. Tufaylī as a literary character is a comic personage. The type of comedy and the methods of invoking humour - such as hyperbole, absurd situations or linguistic jokes - are described. Part three: Socio-cultural aspect - Tufaylī is not only the literary character but the real person who used to live and sponge on medieval Arabic society. Up to XIth century adab literature is the only source about this group. It is difficult to unambiguously point out the reasons for their breaking into private parties or begging for food, but it seems that the only cause was not the poverty, rather a kind of earning a living and a way of life. The early pre-Islamic parasites sponged mainly on wine. Though the picture of uninvited guests as a literary characters is homogenous, the real ṭufaylīs are considerably diverse. There were basically three distinguished groups of uninvited guests. The first one consisted of wealthy people who sponged for fun and liked eating without paying for it. The second formed professional jesters-ṭufaylīs, who were invited to parties to entertain the other guests by telling amusing stories, among others, about spongers who used to take too much advantage of the served food. The last group were the proper ṭufaylīs who sneaked into private houses, ate food and stole some dishes to sell them later. Sometimes they were organized in gangs. The traces of these gangs mainly from Basra show the anecdotes.