Joseph and His Two Wives

Patterns of Cultural Accommodation in the Judæo-Persian Tale of Yusof and Zoleykhā

Bibliographic Data

ID9344489
AuthorsJulia Rubanovich (0000-0001-9266-3239, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume13
Issue2
Pages146-195
Publication date2021-07-06
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Persianate Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1874-7094 • E-ISSN: 1874-7167
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/18747167-bja10006
OpenAlexW3180023076
LanguageEN
Citations received3

The Tale of Yusof and Zoleykhā appears as part of a religious epic poem, the Bereshit-nāma (Book of Genesis), by the fourteenth-century Judæo-Persian poet Shāhin. Composed in 1358–59, in classical Persian with an admixture of Hebraisms and written in Hebrew characters, this tale was enormously popular within Persian-speaking Jewish communities and was frequently copied on its own. The paper focuses on two episodes from this story: Yusof’s marriages to Zoleykhā and to Osnat (Asenath). Shāhin was active in the late Il-khanid and early post-Mongol periods, when new forms of patronage of literary and artistic production emerged seeking to blend different cultural worlds. The poet indeed fashioned unique amalgams of Jewish and Perso-Islamic traditions, both in form and content. The two episodes constitute small case studies for exploring Shāhin’s diverse array of sources and for determining the thematic and structural ramifications of this fusion. The paper pinpoints how Shāhin accommodated and adapted Jewish and Islamic materials and demonstrates that, though Jewish, the poet firmly ensconces himself in a Persianate cultural sphere

Art · EPIC · Islam · Judaism · Literature · Persian · Poetry · Theology · Eurasian Exchange Networks · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Philosophy

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