Ralph T.H. Griffith - Yusuf and Zulaikha

PERSIA
In 13 Volumes

First published in 1882 by
Trbner & Co Ltd

Reprinted in 2000, 2002 by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

1882 Ralph T H Griffith

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

Ysuf and Zulaikha
ISBN 0-415-24536-2
Persia: 13 Volumes
ISBN 0-415-24294-0
Trbners Oriental Series
ISBN 0-415-23188-4
ISBN 978-1-136-39456-0 (ePub)

N RU-D-DN A BDU-R- R AHMN was born in the year 1414 A.D ., at Jm, a little town in Khursn, from which he took the poetic name, Jmi, by which he is generally known. At the age of five he received the name of Nru-d-dn, or, Light of the Faith; and in later life his learning, fame, and sanctity gained for him the title of Mauln, or, Our Master. He studied at Hert and Samarkand, where he not only outstripped the ablest and most diligent of his fellow-students, but puzzled the most learned of his teachers. The fame of his learning soon spread to the most distant provinces of Persia, and into other Asiatic countries. Sultan Abu Sad, Tmurs uncle, invited him to his court at Hert, and all the princes, nobles, and learned men of the time sought the company of the distinguished poet. In 1472 A.D ., Jmi performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, and, after some stay at Baghdad, returned in the following year to Hert, where he died in 1492.

Jmi is the last great poet that Persia has produced. He devoted the whole of his life to study and literary work, and has left behind him at least fifty volumes of poetry, grammar, and theology, which are still read and admired in the eastern world. With us, says Mr. Fitzgerald, in his notice of Jms Life prefixed to his translation of Salmn and Absl, his name is almost wholly associated with his Ysuf and Zulaikha; the Beharistan; and this present Salmn and Absl, which he tells us is like to be the last product of his old age. And these three count for three of the brother stars of that constellation into which his seven best mystical poems are clustered under the name of Heft Aurangthose Seven Thrones to which we of the West and North give our characteristic names of Great Bear and Charless Wain.

But of all the works of Jm, Ysuf and Zulaikha is undoubtedly the most famous. In Indiaalthough for obvious reasons it is not admitted into the course of Government or aided schoolsit is read in all independent indigenous schools in which Persian is taught, and is in them what Ovid is or was in all grammar-schools in England. Every Persian scholar in the country has read it, and many know its finest passages by heart. In Europe, too, the merits of the poem have been acknowledged: Le pome (says Thornton) des amours de Joseph et de Zulikha, qui est considr par les juges comptens de la littrature comme le plus bel ouvrage qui existe en Orient. Jaumee, says another scholar in his old-fashioned phonetic spelling, whose poem on the loves of Joseph and Zuleika is one of the finest compositions in the language, and deserves to be translated into every European languageJaumee has decorated with all the graces of poetry the romantic story of the youthful Canaanite.

Ysuf and Zulaikha has been translated into German blank verse by Rosenzweig, whose meritorious though decidedly heavy version was published side by side with the Persian text in a handsome well-printed folio at Vienna in 1824. This work has long been out of print, and is now almost unprocurable. I am indebted to Messrs. Trbner & Co. for a copy which, after three years inquiries, they obtained for me; and I gratefully acknowledge my obligations to the translation, which has been of service to me at times, and to the explanatory notes, from which I have borrowed freely. The poem has not, I believe, been translated into any other European language; only a little volume entitled Analysis and Specimens of the Joseph and Zulaikha, by S. R., was published by Messrs. Williams & Norgate in 1872. This very unpretending work does not appear to have attracted much notice, and I was unaware of its existence till a month ago. The translator has followed Rosenzweig very carefully in the specimens which he gives in prose, and his analysis of the rest of the poem is accurate and good.

It is well known that Ysuf, or Joseph, as we call him, is looked upon by the people of Islm as the ideal of manly beauty and more than manly virtue; but it is not so generally known perhaps that the romantic tale of the love, the sufferings, and the crowning happiness of Zulaikha, as told by Jm, was intended to shadow forth the human souls love of the highest beauty and goodnessa love which attains fruition only when the soul has passed through the hardest trials, and has, like Zulaikha, been humbled, purified, and regenerated. So this Allegory resembles in its drift that famous and lovely one in which Celestial Cupid