Half of All Beauty

So the wife of al-ʿAzīz wanted to teach them a lesson. She invited these women, gave them some fruit, and gave them knives. Then she told them to start eating, so they would cut the fruit with the knives. And she had already prepared her slave, Yūsuf.

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said that Yūsuf had been given half of beauty; there was no one more handsome than him. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said that he saw him in the heavens when he made the journey of the Miʿrāj: wa raʾaytu Yūsufa wa idhā huwa qad ūtiya shaṭr al-ḥusn — and I saw Yūsuf, and he had been given half of beauty. Ibn Masʿūd would later say that whenever Yūsuf dealt with any woman, he would cover his face.

The interpreters of this hadith say it could mean either that Yūsuf had half of the beauty of the world, or that Yūsuf had half of the beauty of Ādam (peace be upon him) — because Allah (swt) created Ādam with His own hands, and scholars said that was the best form of a human being. So Yūsuf had half of the beauty of Ādam.

So they began eating, and she made Yūsuf walk in front of them. The women were cutting the fruit when they looked up and saw Yūsuf walking. They kept staring at Yūsuf while the knives kept moving, until the knives were cutting through their flesh and cutting their fingers. And when Yūsuf had passed, they realised they had cut their own hands.

Then, when they saw him, they exalted him at his beauty, and in their astonishment cut their hands, and said: how perfect is Allah — this is no man; this is none other than a noble angel. This could not be a man; this was an angel. Now they understood what the wife of al-ʿAzīz was going through.