including the assembly of ladies and the torn garment. For thefirst time in
Jewish commentaries, it names the wife as Zulica and describes her passion
with the term“soul-cleaving,”indicating both the transcendent and erotic
aspects of love. The thirteenth-centuryYalkut Shomoni describes the
couple moving from room to room as he resists her persistence by evoking
God.^27
Islamic and Jewish commentaries thus seem to have developed in
tandem. This reflects both the dialogical nature of interpretive practice in
both religions and the proliferation of mystical–philosophical interpreta-
tion in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. In both, the correct version of
‘religion’lies not in an ur-scripture, but in the legacy of perpetually
renewed interpretation. Although sociopolitical relations were not always
smooth between Jews and Muslims under Islamic rule, cultural interaction
enabled intellectual communication. For example, Moses ben Maimon was
born in Cordoba under Almoravid rule, but went into exile due to unfa-
vorable conditions for non-Muslims after the Almohad conquest in Spain.
After living and working in Fez, also an intellectual center for Muslims, he
later lived in Cairo. Influenced by earlier prominent Islamic thinkers, his
philosophy and writings influenced later thinkers regardless of confession.
Geographies of premodern Jewish and Islamic thought often overlapped,
particularly through the strong presence of Sephardic communities in
Spain and North Africa and the continuity of pre-Islamic communities
in Iran. Maimon’s legacy suggests the possibility of an interpretive envir-
onment for the story of Joseph and Zuleikha bounded less by religion as
identity but permeated by the interplay of considered faith.
8.2 From Theology to Poetry
The story’s timelessness contributes to its pedagogical efficacy: a young
woman, married to an impotent old man, falls in forbidden love with a
young man of lower rank. Upon discovery of their liaison, she tries to
protect her honor by accusing him of rape. Yet women are always to blame.
Poetry elucidates how the curiously salacious“most beautiful of stories”
functions as a morality tale:tafsirfor the masses.
This transition from scripture to romance emerges in the writings of
Suhrawardi. Zuleikha’s love becomes a metaphor for abjection in the face
of the divine. In his rendition:
(^27) Gur-Klein, 2001.
From Theology to Poetry 231