You will not attain to taste the draught of Meaning (ma’ni)
Do not, though, tarry overlong with the Figure (surat)
But bring yourself swift across this bridge.”^65
His sentiment closely resembles Plotinus’acceptance of physical beauty as
a prelude to the divine. Plotinus’description of material phenomena as
“playthings”does not make those who have experienced non-corporeal
beauty repudiate the body, because in it they recognize the echo of higher
beauty in the phenomenon of love.
There are souls to whom earthly beauty is a leading to the memory of that in the
higher realm and these love the earthly as an image; those that have not attained to
this memory do not understand what is happening within them, and take the
image for the reality. Once there is perfect self-control, it is no fault to enjoy the
beauty of the earth; where appreciation degenerates into carnality, there is sin.^66
As for Jami, the image has a double valence between a physical manifesta-
tion and the reality it potentially hides, and the sexual love and the love of
the divine which it makes present in earthly form.
Whereas Yusuf is redeemed through his stay in prison, ultimately enabling
his rise as leader of Egypt, Zuleikha’s redemption lags. It begins with the
banquet she gives for the local scolds, who cut their hands upon seeing
Joseph. Probably the most frequently illustrated scene of the tale, it encapsu-
lates the redemptive cast of Jami’s narration. An illustrated Judeo-Persian
version was penned in 1853, with iconography similar to that of Islamic
texts. [Plate 15] Probably executed in Masshad by crypto-Jews who maintained
their faith despite being forced to overtly practice Islam as of 1839, it none-
theless underscores the shared culture of Jews and Muslims in Iran that
informed the entire interpretive history of the narrative and underscores the
Eurocentrism of the term“Judeo-Christian”. As Graves suggests, the cultural
overlap of objects points to the unsustainability of the“religio-cultural silos”
where taxonomic art history has traditionally segregated them.^67
The frequency of the scene’s illustration, common on nineteenth-cen-
tury Qajar tiles set in spaces that would be used for social gatherings,
suggests the absolution offered by Jami as the preferred moral of the
story. As the women cut their hands and bite their lips, losing themselves
in admiration, they discover that nobody can fail to fall in love with the
divine. Far from shameful, romance becomes sacral. Whereas earlier in the
(^65) Ahmed, 2015 : 38. (^66) Halliwell, 2002 : 319; Plotinus, 1991 : 175 (III.5.1).
(^67) Graves, 2018 : 179; Amar, 2012: 110.
From Theology to Poetry 245