The Story of Yusuf

From the Qur’ānic Prototext to the Shorter Poetical Forms in the Bosniak Divan Poetry

Abstract

The first part of the paper presents some of the – according to our opinion – key motifs in the Qur’ānic story of Yusuf and Zulaikha, focusing in the tafsīr interpretation of those motifs, and indicating Testament as well as in the Qur’ān. The second part of the paper indicates certain interesting common elements of Turkish narrative poems (mesnevî) that refer to the Most Beautiful Story and their presentation of the protagonists and a “reading” of their path. The third part of the paper uses examples of verses by Bosniac authors of the Ottoman period to indicate references and allusions to this very complex theme.

This relatively small number of examples shows that our authors knew the Most Beautiful Story, both through Sacred Text and through its re-interpretations in narrative poems, through many striking motifs and situations, rethinking it, referring to its timelessness and its numerous important messages, sights, relations and situations, and re-constructing it through the poets’ personal experiences. We have also noted several integral short poetic forms referring to this story, various narrative poems about Yusuf and Zuleikha, references to Yusuf in the prophetic genealogy, Yusuf’s supra-natural beauty, the motifs of dreams, the envy of Yusuf’s brothers, the well, the auction, Yakub’s mourning of the lost son, Zuleikha’s love, Zuleikha’s act of enticing to sin and her subsequent remorse, the palace she built for Yusuf, the motif of Yusuf’s shirt, the testimony of a baby in a crib, and Yusuf in a dungeon – offering certain observations on the transposed meaning of these references and allusions.