But Joseph loosened not the dart
From his archer’s ring
Unto her proffered target,
Nor shattered he the seal of her shell
Therein to drop his own pearl.
His heart yearned to bore her shell
With his diamond-point,
But his chastity held guardian sway...
Of a sudden, in the midst of their fray, His eye caught sight of a brocaded
curtain
Drawn clear across a corner of the room...
An idol, golden-bodied, and of gemstones his eyes.^56
By maintaining the icon introduced by Sa’di as the proof that stops Joseph
from sin, Jami unites fornication and idolatry not simply as forbidden, but
as a necessary to transcendence.
An example of this transcendence of absolute sin through the idol can
be found in the controversial abrogated verses of the Quran, often
referred to as the‘satanic’or‘bird’verses. The Quran refers ambiguously
to these passages:“Wehaveneversentanymessengerorprophetbefore
you [Muhammad] into whose wishes Satan did not insinuate something,
but god removes what Satan insinuates and then God affirms his mes-
sage”(Q22:52).^57 Early biographies of the Prophet relate that during the
recitation of one of the early suras of the Quran (the Star), Muhammad
undermined his message of absolute monotheism. In contrast to the
Quranic passage where he points to the pre-Islamic goddesses al-Lat,
al-‘Uzza, and Manat as idols rather than divinities (Q53:19–20), such
early reports suggest that he hoped to please the Meccans and persuade
them to convert by acknowledging the reality of pre-Islamic gods and
goddesses. While medieval interpretations of the passage made some
allowance for the fallibility of the Prophet enabling such ambiguities,
modern orthodoxy later declared such reports as ahistorical and
heretical.^58 Thus in the context that Jami was writing, the fallibility of a
prophet remained an acceptable trope through which to engage the
recognition of the Absolute.
This theme appears clearly as well in ibn Arabi’s interpretation of the
Quranic revelation of the stories of Noah and the worshipers of the golden
calf. For him, the Quranic phrase“Your Lorddeterminedthat you will not
(^56) Barry, 2004 : 209. (^57) Abdel-Haleem, 2004 : 212. (^58) Ahmed, 1998 :72–73.
From Theology to Poetry 241