In the House of the ʿAzīz

This trade caravan, then, takes him to Egypt and sells him, and he is bought by the ʿAzīz of Miṣr. He is not the king, but he is the ʿAzīz of Miṣr. And there he grows older; and as he grows older his handsomeness, mā shāʾ Allāh, increases manifold. And the wife of the ʿAzīz becomes infatuated with him and tries to seduce him — and then the whole account of what takes place. She locks him in a room and tries to seduce him, and he runs for the door, although he knows it is locked. What else is a man to do? And what we learn from it is that one does what one can. So he runs to the door — and though there were who knows how many locks upon it, mā shāʾ Allāh, he got it open. And he got out; and she tore his garment from behind.

Now she lays the blame upon him. And in the whole account a little child — Allah provides a miracle — a little child speaks: it depends upon where the qamīṣ is torn from. If it is torn from the front, he is to blame. If it is torn from behind, she is to blame, for it means that he was running away and she seized him from behind. And it turns out, plainly, that it was torn from behind.

So then, simply to avoid the controversy and the embarrassment, Yūsuf (peace be upon him) was put into the prison. Mā shāʾ Allāh, there he continued his work of daʿwah. There he is reforming people, it appears. And the story continues until the king sees a dream, in which he sees seven ears of corn, and so forth. The whole discussion is there, and he wants an interpretation of it. No one there is able to furnish one. Then one of the prisoners, who had had dealings with Yūsuf (peace be upon him) — who had helped them with their dreams in the prison — now remembers: there is someone in the prison. So he says he will go back and speak with him. He goes back; Yūsuf (peace be upon him) tells him the meaning of the dream, and tells him also what to do, since seven years of drought are coming. So he tells him how to preserve the staple foods of the time, that they may benefit from them later.

He goes back. Mā shāʾ Allāh, the king says: yes, he must be brought out. But Yūsuf (peace be upon him) says that he will not come out yet. He does not wish to come out as a favour; he wishes to come out because he ought to be exonerated and set free. So he says: go and ask those women who set this slander about. And then, mā shāʾ Allāh, it became entirely plain — al-āna ḥaṣḥaṣa al-ḥaqq: it was she who had tried to seduce him, and he was in the clear.

And after that the story continues, as is set out below. But truly, when one reads it slowly and lives with the feeling of it — the feeling of Yaʿqūb (peace be upon him) weeping, longing for his children to return, never giving up hope — there is so much in it. Fawwaḍtu amrī ilā Allāh, tawakkaltu ʿalā Allāh. And there is a great deal besides. Sūrat Yūsuf, then, as has been said, is a sūrah whose translation may be read and benefited from, in shāʾ Allāh, it being a very straightforward story.