story a group of women converts through the utterances of Yusuf–his
discourse of the law–here, a group of women converts through a visionary
experience guided through an eroticized framework of love. In keeping
with al-Ghazali (see Chapter 4.2), Jami thus recognizes the power of
demonstrative theology, but prefers the Sufipath.
The conclusion of the tale traces Zuleikha’s redemption through for-
mulas of abjection bridging the gap between histories of dervishes and the
romance genre. She ultimately gives up her idol and goes blind. This
strengthens the inner vision underlying her passion. Thus able to see
without seeing, she ultimately comes before Yusuf. He prays for the
restoration of her (physical) sight, they marry and have a family. He dies,
and she dies at his grave.
Jami’s deployment of sexual themes for religious teaching was not unique.
Not only does Jalal al-Din Rumi’sMathnawiinclude sexual anecdotes, but
some were even illustrated in a well-funded illustrated edition produced
around 1530 in the royal atelier of the second Safavid ruler, Shah Tahmasp,
only a few decades after Jami penned his poem. The scenes, which describe
tales about“The man up a pear tree who saw his wife and her lover together”
and“The woman who discovered her maidservant having improper relations
with an ass,”were no doubt as amusing in their own time as they are today.
However, rather than segregating thesestories as pornographic, this manu-
script highlights them through refined illustration [Figure 11]. In a manner
reminiscent of ibn Muqaffa’s exhortation to take fables seriously (SeeChapter
3.2), Rumi underscores the meaningfulness of his bawdy humor:(My) bawdy (hazl) is instruction, listen to it in seriousness
Do not be taken up with its exterior jest (hazl).
To jesters (hazilan) every serious matter is a jest
To the wise all jests are serious.^68
The stories titillate because they are impolite, but they are not erotic in that
they use humor to avoid arousing sexual desire in the reader. Rather, they
call attention to important messages by inciting curiosity. Jami takes this
rhetorical trick one step further, arousing the desire of the reader through
an elaborate description of interrupted coitus. If this proves shocking to us
today, it reflects more on the projection of our modern prudery on the past
than on the frank discussions of sexuality in historical texts.
Zuleikha’s abjection on the path of love resembles that in a parable
related in Attar’sLanguage of the Birds. In it, the elderly and highly(^68) Tourage,2005: 207 (IV: 3558).
246 The Transgressive Image