Jalal al-Din al-Rumi and his view of the story of Joseph and Zulekha in the Holy Quran

Abstract

The story of Joseph and Zulaikha is one of the most beautiful stories of the Holy Quran. And the general commentators have similar interpretations about this story, which means that they rely on the apparent form of the story and look at Zuleikha’s love for Joseph as an impermissible love and lust, and its end is the scandal of Zulekha and Joseph’s exit from this affair with his head held high. But Al-Rumi, with his assertion that the Mathnawi and the moral were made on the approach of the Qur’an, Mawlawi Al-Rumi crossed this apparent stage of the story and looked at it from the aesthetic side, love, and the effect of beauty on the boiling of love. Of course, this is not a response to the apparent meaning of the story on which commentators agree. As it is noted in his poems that in addition to his acceptance of the apparent form of the story, he transcends it and reaches the beauty and love that were mentioned in the story as well.