respected Shaykh San’an of Mecca begins to see dreams in which he
lives in Constantinople and bows before an idol. Likening himself to
Joseph trapped in the well, he travels to the distant city with 400
followersintow.There,heglimpsesaChristianprincessandfallsin
love.
Now when the Christian girl so pulled aside her veil,
She bound up the sheikh in a bind of her hair
And so cast him down into the pyre!
When she showed him her face
From under veils of her hair,
From every hair of her veil
Did he bind him a cord
Into hundreds of folds, like a Byzantine monk, all around him.
Hardly needed the sheikh for to look further to her,
To this girl of the Christians, love’s work wrought upon him,
His heart leaped from his hand, down he fell at her feet,
Where he fell there was only afire
To burn there, from his top to his toe he turned into a pyre
And all that was left of his heart in thefire
Was a black wisp of smoke:
melancholy’s.^69
In the context of the frame story, reference to the pyre associates Shaykh
San’an with the phoenix, destroyed on the pyre only to rise again, as well as
al-Hallaj, renouncing self for love of God.
When she discovers him abased before her palace, she toys with him,
making him convert to Christianity, drink wine, bow before images, and
ultimately become her swineherd. Yet the poem makes clear that his
abasement is also self-abnegation.
He put aside the Self and selfish lust;
In grief he smeared his locks withfilth and dust.
Similarly, after Joseph’s imprisonment, Zuleikha eventually gives up all her
wealth, beauty, idolatry, and her eyesight in longing for the beloved. In
both cases, the beloved, like the idol, functions as a transitional object
toward the true love of the ineffable divine.
Like Joseph, Shaykh San’anfinds himself in the hands of a manipulative
seductress. Unlike Joseph, however, he is no prophet. Instead, like
Zuleikha, he is the lover, utterly undone by his devotion.(^69) Barry, 2004 : 17.
248 The Transgressive Image