from Vol. #7, Issue 1: Spring 2016
Ralph T. H. Griffith

Preface: from Yúsuf and Zulaikha

Núru-d-dín Abdu-r-Rahmán was born in the year 1414 A.D., at Jám, a little town in Khurásán, from which he took the poetic name, Jámí, by which he is generally known. At the age of five he received the name of Núru-d-dín, or, Light of the Faith; and in later life his learning, fame, and sanctity gained for him the title of Mauláná, or, Our Master. He studied at Herát and Samarkand, where he not only outstripped the ablest and most diligent of his fellow-students, but puzzled the most learned of his teachers. The fame of his learning soon spread to the most distant provinces of Persia, and into other Asiatic countries. Sultan Abu Sa'íd, Tímur's uncle, invited him to his court at Herát, and all the princes, nobles, and learned men of the time sought the company of the distinguished poet. In 1472 A.D., Jámí performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, and, after some stay at Baghdad, returned in the following year to Herát, where he died in 1492.

Jámí is the last great poet that Persia has produced. He devoted the whole of his life to study and literary work, and has left behind him at least fifty volumes of poetry, grammar, and theology, which are still read and admired in the eastern world. "With us," says Mr. Fitzgerald, in his notice of Jámí's Life prefixed to his translation of "Salámán and Absál," "his name is almost wholly associated with his 'Yúsuf and Zulaikha;' the 'Beharistan;' and this present ' Salámán and Absál,' which he tells us is like to be the last product of his old age. And these three count for three of the brother stars of that constellation into which his seven best mystical poems are clustered under the name of 'Heft Aurang'-those 'Seven Thrones' to which we of the West and North give our characteristic names of 'Great Bear' and 'Charles's Wain.'"

But of all the works of Jámí, "Yúsuf and Zulaikha" is undoubtedly the most famous. In India-although for obvious reasons it is not admitted into the course of Government or aided schools-it is read in all independent indigenous schools in which Persian is taught, and is in them what Ovid is or was in all grammar­schools in England. Every Persian scholar in the country has read it, and many know its finest passages by heart. In Europe, too, the merits of the poem have been acknowledged: "Le poème" (says Thornton) "des amours de Joseph et de Zulikha, qui est considéré par les juges compétens de la littérature comme le plus bel ouvrnge qui existe en Orient.'' ''Jaumee,"says another scholar in his old-fashioned phonetic spelling, "whose poem on the loves of Joseph and Zuleika is one of the finest compositions in the language, and deserves to be translated into every European language-Jaumee has decorated with all the graces of poetry the romantic story of the youthful Canaanite."

"Yúsuf and Zulaikha" has been translated into German blank verse by Rosenzweig, whose meritorious though decidedly heavy version was published side by side with the Persian text in a handsome well-printed folio at Vienna in 1824. This work has long been out of print, and is now almost unprocurable. I am indebted to Messrs. Trübner & Co. for a copy which, after three years' inquiries, they obtained for me; and I gratefully acknowledge my obligations to the translation, which has been of service to me at times, and to the explanatory notes, from which I have borrowed freely. The poem has not, I believe, been translated into any other European language; only a little volume entitled "Analysis and Specimens of the Joseph and Zulaikha," by S. R., was published by Messrs. Williams & Norgate in 1872. This very unpretending work does not appear to have attracted much notice, and I was unaware of its existence till a month ago. The translator has followed Rosenzweig very carefully in the specimens which he gives in prose, and his analysis of the rest of the poem is accurate and good.

It is well known that Yúsuf, or Joseph, as we call him, is looked upon by the people of Islám as the ideal of manly beauty and more than manly virtue; but it is not so generally known perhaps that the romantic tale of the love, the sufferings, and the crowning happiness of Zulaikha, as told by Jámí, was intended to shadow forth the human soul's love of the highest beauty and goodness-a love which attains fruition only when the soul has passed through the hardest trials, and has, like Zulaikha, been humbled, purified, and regenerated. So this Allegory resembles in its drift that famous and lovely one in which Celestial Cupid-

"Holds his dear Psyche sweet entranced,
After her wandering labours long,
Till free consent the Gods among
Make her his eternal bride."

I have endeavoured in my translation to give what I can of the spirit of the poem, and at the same time to reproduce its form and manner as closely as the differing idioms of the two languages permit me to do. But Jámí 's plays upon words-which are looked on as beauties in Persian poetry-have been obliged to pass by without attempting the almost impossible and useless task of reproducing them. Most of them I omit even to notice, as they are unintelligible without the Persian text and context, and my translation is intended for English readers.

My version covers a little more than three-fourths of the entire poem, which contains about eight thousand lines. In the Appendix I give some notice of the omissions I have made in the introductory cantos and of the concluding cantos which I have not translated. I think it best to end my version with the betrothal of Yúsuf and Zulaikha, where the interest of the story culminates and ends.

Jámí has employed throughout this poem the rhymed hendecasyllabic couplet, and a translation in unrhymed verse would altogether fail to give an idea of his manner. Accordingly for the introductory cantos, which are didactic and somewhat stately in style, I have used the old rhymed heroic metre, and for the rest of the poem a lighter and freer measure, in which I vary at will the number of syllables or accents. I fear that many of my lines will not read off easily at first sight: but I trust that the greater fault of monotony has to some extent been avoided.

Sourced from the verse translation published by Trübner & Co. of London in 1882. The staff of Pusteblume has typeset and proofed this text from a public domain source scan provided to Archive.org by one of its institutional partners, the University of Toronto.

See also: Homepage for this feature | Editor's Note by Zachary Bos | Preface | Excerpt 1: "Beauty" | Excerpt 2: "Love" | Excerpt 3: "Speech" | Excerpt 4: "The First Vision" | Excerpt 5: "Yusuf's Dream" | Excerpt 6: "The Garden" | A brief annotated bibliography for recent writings about the poetry and legacy of Jámí

About the author (quoting the Preface to the 1882 Trübner & Co. edition): "Núru-d-dín Abdu-r-Rahmán was born in the year 1414 A.D., at Jám, a little town in Khurásán, from which he took the poetic name, Jámí, by which he is generally known. At the age of five he received the name of Núru-d-dín, or, Light of the Faith; and in later life his learning, fame, and sanctity gained for him the title of Mauláná, or, Our Master. He studied at Herát and Samarkand, where he not only outstripped the ablest and most diligent of his fellow-students, but puzzled the most learned of his teachers. The fame of his learning soon spread to the most distant provinces of Persia, and into other Asiatic countries. Sultan Abu Sa’íd, Tímur’s uncle, invited him to his court at Herát, and all the princes, nobles, and learned men of the time sought the company of the distinguished poet. In 1472 A.D., Jámí performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, and, after some stay at Baghdad, returned in the following year to Herát, where he died in 1492."

About the translator: Ralph Thomas Hotchkin Griffith (1826–1906) was a scholar of Indology. Educated at Queen's College, over his career he produced translations of the Ramayana, the Kumara Sambhava of Kalidasa, and the Vedic scriptures.

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