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Zulaykha and Yusuf: Whose “Best Story”?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Gayane Karen Merguerian  and
Afsaneh Najmabadi
Gayane Karen Merguerian
Affiliation:
Bibliographic Services Librarian, Northeastern University, Boston, Mass. 02115USA.
Afsaneh Najmabadi
Affiliation:
Associate Professor in the Department of Women's Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University, 3009 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10027, USA.
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Extract

Some of the classical commentaries on the sura Yusuf tell us that one day the Prophet Muhammad was reciting Qurʾanic verses for his companions. Bored and weary, they said, “‘O Prophet of Allah! What if you told us a story, what if God Almighty would send a sura that did not contain commandments and prohibitions, and that sura would be a story that soothed our hearts?' God, Mighty and Exalted, said, ‘I will narrate to you the best story.’”

Type
Articles:The Politics of Cultural Expression
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , November 1997 , pp. 485 - 508
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

NOTES

Authors' note: In writing this paper, we have benefited from the comments and criticism of participants in several seminars and discussion groups: Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual Meeting, panel on “Gender and Islamic History: Medieval and Modern Approaches,” 25 November 1991; Department of Religion (Columbia University), 17 November 1992; One Thousand and One Nights Group (Columbia University), 23 February and 30 March 1993 meetings; and Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 3 November 1994. We also would like to thank the anonymous readers of the journal and the friends and colleagues who have kindly offered critical comments and suggestions: Jerome Clinton, Maribel Fierro, James Lindsay, Kanan Makiya, Farzaneh Milani, Hasan Mneimneh, Malik Mufti, Denise Spellberg.

1 Qurʾan, sura 12.

2 Lit. “the best of stories.” ibn, Abū Bakr ʿAtīqSūrābādī, Muḥammad, Yūsuf va Zulaykhā az tafsīr-i Fārsi-i Turbat-i Jām [Joseph and Zulaykha from the Persian Commentary of Turbat-i Jām], ed. Khānlarī, Parvīz Natl (Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, n.d.), 7Google Scholar.

3 Among such commentaries are Ṭūsī, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Zayd, Tafsīr-i sūrah-i Yūsuf: Al-sittīn al-jāmiʿ lillāiʾ if al-basātīn (Commentary on Sura Yūsuf: The Comprehensive Sixty [Chapters] about the Pleasant Things of the Gardens [of Knowledge]), ed. Rawshan, Muḥammad (Tehran: Bungāh-i tarjumah va nashr-i kitāb, 1977)Google Scholar; Hiravī, Muʿīn al-Dīn Farāhī, Ḥadaʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq dar tafsīr-i sūrah-i Yusuf (Gardens of Truth in Commentary on Sura Yūsuf), ed. Sajjadi, Sayyid Jaʿfar (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1985)Google Scholar; Al-BaqarīAhmad Mahir, Mahmud Ahmad Mahir, Mahmud, Yūsuf fi al-Qurʾān (Yūsuf in the Qurʾan) (Beirut: Dar al-Nahḍa al-ʿArabiya, 1984)Google Scholar; Nawfal, Aḥmad, Sūra Yūsuf: Dirāasāt Taḥhlīlīya (The Sūra Yūsuf: An Analytic Study) (Amman: Dār al-Furqān li-1-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʿa, 1989)Google Scholar.

4 Spellberg, Denise A., Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of ʿAʾisha Bint Abi Bakr (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), chap. 4Google Scholar.

5 Malti-Douglas, Fedwa, Woman's Body, Woman's Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), chap. 3Google Scholar.

6 Stowasser, Barbara F., Women in the Qurʾan, Tradition, and Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 50–56Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., 4.

8 lbid., 56.

9 Arabic and Persian are the languages that between us we feel competent to use. For a discussion of this story in Turkish literature, see Thomas, Stephanie Bowie, “The Story of Joseph in Islamic Literature With an Annotated Translation of the Pre-Ottoman Destan-i Yusuf by Seyyad Hamza” (M.A. thesis. Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, Columbia University, 1992)Google Scholar.

10 seeEncyclopaedia Judaica Jerusalem (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 202–18, s.v. “Joseph.”Google Scholar

11 The most important among these tales is perhaps Sandbādnāmah, which is considered to be the “mother tale” of many related ones of this genre, such as Tūtī-nāmah and Bakhtīārnāmah. The most intact Persian version of Sandbād'nāmah, by al-Samarqandī, Muḥammad al-Ẓahīrī (A.D. 12th century), is now available in several editions. The version edited by Ahmed Ateṣ (Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Basimevi, 1948)Google Scholar contains an Arabic and a Turkish version of Sandbādnāmah. An early English translation of Sandbādnāmah was published in 1884 in Glasgow (“privately printed”), The Book of Sindibād, trans. Clouston, W. A.. The French translation is from al-Ẓahīrī's version, Le Livre des sept vizirs, trans. Bogdanovic, Dejan (Paris: Sindbad, 1975)Google Scholar. For a discussion of origins of Sandbādnāmah, see Perry, B. E., “The Origin of the Book of Sindbad,” Fabula: Journal of Folktale Studies 3 (1959): 1–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a useful anthology, see Yohannan, John D., Joseph and Potiphar's Wife in World Literature: An Anthology of the Story of the Chaste Youth and the Lustful Stepmother (New York: New Directions, 1968)Google Scholar.

12 For English translations of Qurʾanic verses, we have consulted several editions. These include: The Koran (with parallel Arabic text), trans. Dawood, N. J. (London: Penguin, 1990)Google Scholar; The Koran Interpreted, trans. Arberry, A. J. (New York: Macmillan, 1955)Google Scholar; The Meaning of the Glorious Qurʾan, ed. and trans. Pickthall, Muhammad M. (Elmhurst, N.Y.: Tahrike Tarsile Quʾan, 1992)Google Scholar; The Quran: The Eternal Revelation Vouchsafed to Muhammad the Seal of the Prophets, trans. Khan, Muhammad Zafrulla (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

13 For a recent and thorough example, see Goldman, Shalom, The Wiles of Women/The Wiles of Men: Joseph and Potiphar's Wife in Ancient Near Eastern, Jewish, and Islamic Folklore (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

14 See Mahdi, Muhsin, ed., Alf layla wa layla (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984), 64Google Scholar; and Samarqandi, Muḥammad Ẓahīrī, Kitab-i sandbādnāmah, ed. Shiʿār, Jaʿfar (Tehran: Khāvar, 1954), 105Google Scholar.

15 Yohannan, , Joseph and Potiphar's Wife, 4–6Google Scholar.

16 See al-ʿAqqād, ʿAbbās Mahmud, Al-Marʾa fī al-Qurʾān (Women in the Qurʾan) (Beirut: Dār al-Kitab al-ʿArabī, 1969), 23Google Scholar. For more on al-ʿAqqad's views, see Stowasser, , Women in the Qurʾan, 54–55Google Scholar.

17 Bouhdiba, Abdelwahab, Sexuality in Islam, trans. Sheridan, Alan (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 29Google Scholar.

18 Later in this paper we will look at Jāmī's Yūsuf and Zulaykhā in detail. The version we have used is Jāmī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Masnavī-i haft awrang (The Seven Thrones), ed. Gīlānī, Murtizā Mudarris (Tehran: Saʿdī, 1958)Google Scholar. There are two English translations available, one translated by Griffith, Ralph T. H. (London: Trubner & Co., 1882)Google Scholar and the other by Pendlebury, David, Yusuf and Zulaikha (London: The Octagon Press, 1980)Google Scholar. For a French translation, see Youssouf et Zouleikha, trans. Bricteux, Auguste (Paris: Paul Gauthner, 1927)Google Scholar. For representations of the story in paintings, see Brosh, Naʿama, Biblical Stories in Islamic Literature and Painting (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1991)Google Scholar, and Sayf, Hādī, Naqqāshī-i qahvahkhānah-hā (Paintings of Coffee Houses) (Tehran: Rizā ʿAbbāsī Museum, 1990)Google Scholar.

19 Al-ʿAzīz, literally meaning the august, the powerful, or the noble one, is translated in various versions of the Quʾān as the Governor (Arberry) or the Prince (Dawood).

20 Khan's unusual translation is, “they pressed their fingers between their teeth” and “they gnawed their fingers.” SeeKhan, , The Quran: The Eternal Revelation, 221, 223Google Scholar.

21 ln Genesis, the wife accuses Joseph, “He came to me to sleep with me, but I screamed, and when he heard me scream and shout he left his tunic beside me and ran out of the house.” His master is furious and commits him to the king's prison. In other words, the test of truth—the shirt torn from be hind—and the subsequent episodes until he is jailed are not there. Genesis, 39:10–15Google Scholar. This is the last we hear of the wife in Genesis.

22 Kugel, James L., In Potiphar's House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (San Francisco: Harper, 1990), 55Google Scholar.

23 This scene is one of the most popular ones in pictorial representations of the story. See, for instance, Brosh, , Biblical Stories, 52Google Scholar.

24 See Bayḍāwī, ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUmar, Baidawī's Commentary on Surah 12 of the Qurʾan, text accompanied by an interpretive rendering and notes by Beeston, A. F. L. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 88Google Scholar. We will discuss this issue later in the article. In a similar move, Gilbert and Gubar associate the pricking of fingers in the fairy tales “Snow White” and “Sleeping Beauty” with the heroines' being assumed into a domain of sexuality. See Gilbert, Sandra M. and Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979), 37Google Scholar.

25 The female character of the story is not named in the Qurʾan. The only woman with a name in the Qurʾan is Maryam (Mary), mother of Jesus. On this point, see Phillips, John A., Eve: The History of An Idea (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), 152Google Scholar; Milani, Farzaneh, Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992), 47Google Scholar; and Muhsin, Amina Wadud-, Qurʾ ān and Woman (Kuala Lumpur: Penerbit Fajar Bakti, 1992), 32Google Scholar.

26 al-Ṭabarī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl ay al-Qurʾān (The Comprehensive Exposition on the Interpretation of the Qur'an), ed. Shākir, Maḥmūd Muḥammad, 30 vols. (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif bi-Miṣr, 1960)Google Scholar, Tafsīr Sūrat Yūsuf, 16. All quotations from this work will be noted in the text by page number followed by paragraph number, if available.

27 Kugel, , In Potiphar's House, 3 ffGoogle Scholar.

28 Kugel also notes a similar tendency in Jewish, commentaries in In Potiphar's House, 22 ffGoogle Scholar. One could almost posit a rising significance to the figure of Zulaykhā through time. By the 15th century, when Jāmī tells it as a love story, she becomes the central figure of the narrative. As Pendlebury has noted, “It could be said that Zulaikha steals the show” (Pendlebury, Yusuf and Zulaikha, 173)Google Scholar.

29 Ṭabarī says that some know her as Rāʿīl, but perhaps because he does not consider his sources strong or unified enough on this question, he persists in calling her “the wife of al-ʿAzīz” throughout.

30 This conversation echoes a similar dialogue in some of the Jewish commentaries of the Genesis story. See Goldman, , Wiles of Women, 38–39Google Scholar.

31 This suggestion is made as an explanation of why al-ʿAzīz, upon purchasing Yūsuf, says to his wife, “we may adopt him as a son” (12:21). Later commentators have interpreted Ṭabarī's interpretation that “he did not approach women” as signifying either the impotence or homosexuality of al-ʿAzīz. This is another example of details that have most likely come from Midrashic sources, where it is explicitly said that Potiphar bought Yūsuf for his own pleasure, but Gabriel thwarted him by making him impotent. See Ginzberg, Louis, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1909–1936), 2:43Google Scholar. See also Goldman, , Wiles of Women, 44Google Scholar.

32 For a brilliant discussion of the female disruptions of male bonds in Arabic literature, see Malti-Douglas, , Woman's Body, especially chaps. 1, 4, and 5Google Scholar.

33 Zamakhsharī (d. 1144) answered this question by emphasizing Zulaykhā's seductive power and turning it into an occasion for highlighting Yūsuf's strength: “Had the temptation not been so great, the abstinence would not be so praiseworthy.” See al-Zamakhsharī, Abū al-Qāsim Maḥmūd ibn ʿUmar, Al- Kashshāfʿan ḥaqāPiq ghawamiḍ al-tanzīl (The Unveiler of the Realities of the Secrets of the Revelation), 3 vols. (Cairo: Al-Maṭbaʿah al-Sharafīyya, 1889), 1:467Google Scholar.

34 There is no “would” in Arabic; this mood can be implied only by using conjunctions such as “except.”

35 The verse is translated similarly in Arberry (p. 256) and Dawood (p. 237).

36 Bayḍāwī, , Commentary, 90Google Scholar.

37 For Zamakhsharī, , see Kashshāf, 1:478Google Scholar.

38 See Thackston's, W. M. introduction to The Tales of the Prophets of al-Kisaʾi, trans. Thackston, W. M., Jr. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978Google Scholar).

39 Most likely, Kisāʾ's Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ dates to the turn of the 13th century. Ibid.

40 Nagel, T., ”Al-Kisāʾī,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 176Google Scholar.

41 al-Ṭ;abarīʾ, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarir, Tārīkh al-Tabarī: tārīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk (Ṭ;abarī's History: History of the Prophets and the Kings), ed. Ibrāhīm, Muḥammad abū Faḍl (Cairo: Daā al-Macārif bi-Miṣr, 1960), 1:332Google Scholar. For an English translation of this part of Tārīkh, see The History of al-Tabarī, vol. II, Prophets and Patriarchs, trans. Brinner, William M. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 148–85Google Scholar.

42 Kisāʾī, /Thackston, , Tales of the Prophets, 169–70Google Scholar.

43 Ibid., 172.

44 This is an elaboration of the Qurʿanic verse (12:22) in which he reaches the age of maturity while at the home of al-ʿAzīz. For a discussion of this theme, see Yohannan, Joseph and Potiphar's Wife.

45 For the significance of the figure of the old wise woman, see Mustashārnīā, ʿIffat, Dāyah dar adabīyāt-I Fārsī (Nanny in Persian Literature) (Ph.D. thesis, Tehran University, 1978Google Scholar); Milani, Farzaneh, “On Nannies, Gypsies, and Ideal Men: Figures of Mediation,” paper presented at the First Biennial Conference of the Society for Iranian Studies, Arlington, Va., 14–1605 1993Google Scholar; and Rouhi, Leyla, A Comparative Typology of the Medieval Go-Between in Light of Western-European, Near-Eastern, and Spanish Cases (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1995)Google Scholar.

46 Nayshābūrī, Abū al-Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Manṣūr ibn Khalaf, Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ, ed. Yaghmāʾī, Ḥabīb (Tehran: Bungāh-i tarjumah va nashr-i kitāb, 1980), 94–95Google Scholar. Not to be confused with the work of Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Nīsābūrī, also known as al-Thaclabī, d. 427/1036.

47 al-Maybūdī, Abū al-Fażl Rashīd al-Dīn, Kashf al-asrār waʿcuddat al-abrār (Uncovering of the Secrets and the Tool Chest of the Pious), ed. Aṣghar, ʿAlī Ḥikmat (Tehran: Tehran University Press, 1960), 5:38Google Scholar

48 Kisāʾī, /Thackston, , Tales of the Prophets, 175Google Scholar.

49 Ibid.

50 Nayshābūrī, , Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ, 96Google Scholar.

51 Ṭabarī, , Tārīkh, 342Google Scholar.

52 Kisāʾī, /Thackston, , Tales of the Prophets, 176–78Google Scholar.

53 Yaghmāʾī, Ḥabīb, ed., Tarjumah-i tafsīr-i Ṭabarī (Translation of Ṭabarī's Commentary) (Tehran: Ṭūs, 1988), 779–80Google Scholar.

54 Ṭūsī, , al-Sittīn al-jāmiʿ, 368Google Scholar.

55 Maybudī, , Kashf al-asrār, 5:55–56Google Scholar, and Hiravī, , Ḥadāʾ iq al-ḥaqāʾiq, 449–50Google Scholar.

56 Maybudī, , Kashf al-asrār, 5:61Google Scholar; Hiravī, , Ḥadāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq, 471–72Google Scholar; and Ṭūsī, , al-Sittīn, 354Google Scholar.

57 Kisāʾī, /Thackston, , Tales of the Prophets, 179–80Google Scholar. See also Sūrābādī, , Yūsuf va Zulaykhā, 52–55Google Scholar.

58 Nayshābūrī, , Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ, 145–46Google Scholar.

59 Hiravī, , Ḥadāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq, 575–78Google Scholar.

60 Nayshābūrī, , Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāª, 146–48Google Scholar.

61 Bouhdiba, , Sexuality in Islam, 28–29Google Scholar.

62 On the Sufi concept of love, see Schimmel, Annemarie, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 130–48Google Scholar; see also p. 429 for her discussion of Zulaykha n Sufi poetry.

63 The centrality of ambiguity in Jāmī's poetry is brilliantly pointed out by Pendlebury: “Jami is the aster of what could be called ‘constructive ambiguity’, which is never designed merely to confuse, nor is it ever the result of confused thinking; rather its function is to enable the mind simultaneously to entertain ultiple possibilities—and grow in the process. An obvious example of this is the ambivalence of Jāmī's attitude towards his heroine: on the one hand there is no mistaking the love and passion he oth feels for her himself and effectively arouses in his audience; but on the other hand his salute to ulaikha has something of Junaid's salute to the condemned man, whose ‘single-mindedness’ had rought him to the gallows. … [T]he poet encourages conflicting attitudes towards Zulaikha so that his udience cannot walk away with any easy answers as to her nature, but are left instead with the impression of having encountered someone as real—and as unreal—as themselves” (Pendlebury, Yusuf and ulaikha, 179).

64 jāmī, , Haft awrang, 595–96Google Scholar. Subsequent references will be noted in the text.

65 For a discussion of the challenges and problems of reading as a woman, see Culler, Jonathan, “Reading as a Woman,” in On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), 43–64Google Scholar.

66 See Bettelheim, Bruno, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Penguin Books, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In his historical/cultural analysis of “Little Red Riding Hood,” Jack Zipes dismisses psychoanalytic readings of fairy tales, and in particular that of Bettelheim, as ahistorical. See Zipes, Jack, The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar, in particular the prologue and epilogue. Persuasive as his arguments are, they deal with how different writers imagined and rewrote the story in different historical and cultural settings and how different readers as parents and educators may have found a version useful for their educational purposes. The psychoanalytical line of argument proposed by Bettelheim, among others (and regardless of whether one finds any particular school persuasive), concerns how a very young listener relates to a particular version of a given fairy tale. It should be evident that the fascination of a two-year-old girl with the story “Little Red Riding Hood,” demonstrated for instance by her insistence on hearing it night after night, could not be attributed to her desire to hear a story of metaphoric rape and dangers of female disobedience. In fact, because she already so strongly relates to the story, for reasons that we may not be able to access and analyze, a parent or educator can then inscribe her or his moral message on the young listener. In a similar way, when we speak of a listener to or reader of the Yūsuf story, we need to take into account a different set of issues from what may have been the narrative, ethical, moral, or political concerns of the commentators and writers of the story.

67 Pendlebury, , Yusuf and Zulaikha, 179Google Scholar.

68 Jāmi, , Haft awrang, 688Google Scholar.

69 Ṭūsi, Naṣīir al-Dīn, Akhlāq-i Nāṣiri (Nasirean Ethics), ed. Mīnuvī, Mujtabā and Ḥaydarī, ʾAliriżā (Tehran: Khwārazmī, 1978), 219Google Scholar. For an English translation, see The Nasirean Ethics, trans. Wickens, G. M. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964)Google Scholar. Such prohibiting recommendations continue to contemporary times. Maulana Ashraf ʿAli Thanawi lists an unspecified Tafsīr-i sūrat-i yūsuf (Commentary on the Sura Yusuf) among “the harmful books” that women should not read, because such books “are not about religion at all, … [and] spread great harm. … Habits are ruined. Thought is sullied. Indiscretion, shamelessness, and Satanic matters are encouraged.” See Thanawi, Maulana Ashraf ʾ Ali, Perfecting Women: A Partial Translation with Commentary, trans. Metcalf, Barbara Daly (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 375, 379Google Scholar.

70 For some such versions of “Little Red Riding Hood,” see Zipes, Trials and Tribulations.

71 Astarābadī, Bībī Khānum, Maʿ āyib al-rijāl (Vices of Men), ed. Najmabadi, Afsaneh (New York and Bloomington: Nigārish van nigārish-i zan, 1992), 84Google Scholar. For more recent attempts to deal with Zulaykhā and feminine guile, see Rahnavard, Zahrā, Hamgām bā hijrat-i Yūsuf (In Step with Yūsuf's Migration) (Tehran: Nashr-i farhang-i Islāmī, n.d.), 38–41Google Scholar, and Gurji, Munlrah, “Zanān dar Qurʿān” (Women in the Qurʾan), Zan-i rūz (Women's Day), 1318 (29 06 1991): 10–11Google Scholar.

72 See in this connection Malti-Douglas's, discussion of dhakāʾ versus kayd inWoman's Body, 31–32Google Scholar. Goldman also offers several examples of “wiles of women and wiles of men,” and concludes that in attribution of guile, neither gender is spared (Goldman, , Wiles of Women, xx–xxi, 47–48, 93–94, 147Google Scholar). This is not a persuasive argument, because it ignores that a woman's kayd, such as that of Zulaykhā, is inscribed in negative terms connected to her presumably insatiable sexuality. Yūsuf, on the other hand, does not suffer from but is rewarded for his kayd. Goldman's, characterization of the frame story of One Thousand and One Nights as “a tale of ‘the wiles of women and the wiles of men’” (p. 51)Google Scholar is not supported by any reading of that story. The cycle of wiles-of-women stories that Goldman uses extensively to support this argument is taken from a late-19th-century English translation of One Thousand and One Nights by John Payne. Though this cycle is very similar to Sandbādnāmah, the ending is significantly modified, perhaps in the English translation, though there is no way of ascertaining this. (This cycle is also incorporated in a 19th-century Persian translation of One Thousand and One Nights under the subheading makr-i zanān. See Ṭasūjī, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, trans. Hizār va yik shab (Stockholm: Ārash, repr. n.d.), 4:168–217)Google Scholar. In Sandbādnāmah, the king's slave concubine is in fact severely and gruesomely punished before being expelled from town. For an expanded discussion of the female figure in Sandbādnāmah, see Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Reading—and Enjoying—Wiles of Women Stories as a Feminist,” unpublished manuscript.

73 Bahāʾī, Shaykh, Kuliyāt-i ashʾār-i Fārsi va mūsh va gurbah (Collected Persian Poems and Mouse and Cat), ed. Tawhīdī-pūr, Mahdī (Tehran: Maḥmūdī, 1958)Google Scholar.

74 For a recent attempt to rewrite a guile-of-women story from a woman-friendly perspective, see Mazdāpūr, Katāyūn, Rivāyatī digar az Dalīlah-i muḥtālah va makr-i zanān (An/other Narrative of the Beguiling Dalilah and Guile of Women) (Tehran: Rawshangarān, 1995)Google Scholar.

75 Mernissi, Fatima, “Who's Cleverer: Man or Woman?” in Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writings, ed. Badran, Margot and Cooke, Miriam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

76 Bakr, Salwa, “Kayd al-rijāl” (Wiles of Men), in Maqām ʿAṭīyya: riwāya wa qiṣaṣ qaṣīra (ʿAṭīyya's Shrine: A Novel and Short Stories) (Cairo and Paris: Dār al-Fikr li'1-Dirāsat wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawziʿ, 1986), 97–109Google Scholar.

77 Ḥiravī, , Ḥadāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq, 426–39Google Scholar.

78 See, for example, Shīrāzī, Quṭb al-Dīn, Durral al-tāj (The Jewel of the Crown), ed. Humaʾi, Mahdukht (Tehran: Intishārāt-i ʾilmī va farhangī, 1990), 137Google Scholar.

79 ālibi, ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad Thaʿ, Thimār al-qulūbfi al-muḍāf wa-al-mansūb (Fruits of the Hearts in the Attributed Statements), ed. Ibrahim, Muḥammad Abu Faḍl (Cairo: Dār Nahḍat Miṣr li'l-Ṭabaʿwa-al-Nashr, 1965), 305Google Scholar. Emphasis ours.

80 The literature on sexual harassment in recent years may provide us with some vision of alternative narratives that become available when women begin to tell their stories. There are a number of ways in which coverage and interpretation of sexual harassment cases contrast with interpretations of sura Yūsuf that we have surveyed in this essay. When women have spoken up against unwanted sexual solicitation, the skeptical disbelief has been translated into a variety of sentiments, such as, “Well, it is natural sexual attraction. Only a prude would complain of it,” or “She must have asked for it, encouraged it,” and of course “She could say no.” Compare these interpretative strategies to centuries of literary production around the story of Yūsuf and Zulaykhā, where the core tale was the reverse—that is, the story of a woman attempting to seduce the man. Yūsuf did not “ask for it,” nor did he encourage it, although in some Jewish commentaries on the Genesis story there are hints of his improper and vain behavior that one can assume may have contributed to Zulaykhā's infatuation (see Goldman, , Wiles of Women, 37–38Google Scholar). That the contemporary significance of Yūsuf and Zulaykhā occasionally extends beyond the Islamic world was displayed in a parallel drawn by a Harold Segall of Harrison, New York, who wrote the following remarkable letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal soon after congressional hearings were held to confirm Clarence Thomas's appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, during which Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment: “Why does everyone assume that sexual harassment is a one-gender activity? The spate of recent articles on sexual harassment in the workplace, stemming from the accusations against Clarence Thomas, do not mention several lawsuits in recent years in which the allegation was made by a male worker that the offense of sexual harassment was committed by a female superior. The first victim of sexual harassment mentioned in history was a man, Joseph, and the aggressor was Potiphar's wife” (Wall Street Journal 29 10, 1991, A23Google Scholar). Those hearings were significant from another perspective, as well: they dramatically illustrated the importance of having the contesting versions of male and female storytellers available to us. Told by contending voices, the story became a very different one from the simple line of the vengeful woman who has been rejected by the pious man.