In the ninth and tenth century, Arabo-Islamic society circum-Mediterranean evinced the rise of a new kind of adab humanism that served a new kind of human. This group, called merit folks (dhul-ahsab, ie Ahsabis) or new money (dhul-tarif), were "neither royalty nor rabble" according to Ibn Qutayba (d. 889). They were self-made men and women who rose to become judges, chancery staff, soldiers and merchants. According to one source (al-Nawaji, d. 1455), their literary salons (mujalasat) were more egalitarian, sociable and literary than those of kings. In Habermas’s terms, Ahsabis were a stratum of society that came together to claim for themselves a sphere of public concerns distinct from government, where they formed alliances to exert influence on kingship. Ahsabis appropriated adab humanism from the elite as a basis for their alliances and a vehicle for their influence, precisely because adab humanism could reflect and shape collective memory of the past, and thus influence expectations of the future. As part of their strategy to project an alluring subjective interiority, the Ahsabi public promotes and patronizes literature that embraces the satirical: farcical, unsettling, and “carnivalesque” (Bakhtin). This paper focuses on a corpus of bizarre and carnivalesque lore compiled by al-Nawaji in his Halbat al-Kumayt (Gathering for Wine) on the origins of wine culture, and the sociability and adab that surrounded it: Iblis midwifes four animals (peacock, monkey, lion, then pig) as they give their blood to quench the thirsty vine as it grows. The animals empower humans with metonymic traits (pride, playfulness, anger, and drowsiness) that allude to primal human needs. I argue these needs constitute private interests in the face of the state and naturalize yearnings for fulfillment and status: Animals teach the son of the Prophet Seth how to ferment wine for the first time, yielding – to his dismay – a drink that “makes the King seem like a servant,” thus eroding political hierarchies, and prompting him to ban all from consuming the wine, except him. This paper argues that the satirical lore surrounding the origins of wine constitutes a complex discourse that emboldens the Ahsabis with unhinged models of liminality, desire, and creativity, as plants drink blood and humans discover the animal within. Rather than being a mere pastime, wine and wine poetry served as a figura for the ideals of egalitarianism and political participation that the Ahsabis craved.