offered a far broader discursive range through which artists and audiences
alike could at once partake in the attraction of the image and simulta-
neously deflect its seductive dangers. Rather, like the late sixteenth-century
Figure 12Bihzad,Yusuf and Zuleikha, from aBustanby Sa’di. Egyptian National
Library, Adab Farsi 908, fol. 3v
From Theology to Poetry 251