12. Yusuf

Thus We schemed for Joseph.... We raise in degree whomsoever We will. Ibn ʿAṬāÌ said, " We tried him with various sorts of trial until We conveyed him to exaltedness and eminence. " In terms of allusion He is saying, " We turned Joseph over to various sorts of trial and kept him for a long time in the station of bewilderment on the carpet of remorse until We conveyed him to the place of generosity and elevation and let him taste the wine of nearness and intimacy. In face of this blessing that tribulation was not heavy, and next to this nearness that remorse was no loss. " The wont of the Lord of the universe is this: The foundation of happiness is all suffering, and be- neath one disappointment lie a thousand treasures. If you want the wisdom of this clearer and an explication fuller, it means, " We ruled and decreed in the beginningless that Joseph would be king of Egypt. First We showed him the abase- ment of slavery so that he would be informed of the remorse of captives and slaves. Then We tried him with the trial of prison so that he would be aware of the burning and grief of prisoners. We threw him into the gloom of exile so that he would not be heedless of the helplessness of exiles. " Be a mother to orphans, nurture them with gentleness, be noble to askers, fulfill their requests. The generosity We showed to you in your poverty and orphanhood- you show the same, O generous in character, to Our creatures. [DS 36] We raise in degree whomsoever We will. First there is going straight, then unveiling, then con- templation: " We give whomsoever We want a high standing, and We lift up his degrees: first the success of obedience, then the realization of recompense; first the self-purification of deeds, then making states limpid; first the resoluteness of service in the station of the Shariah, then the finding of contemplation in the Haqiqah itself. " Going straight alludes to the Shariah, unveiling alludes to the Tariqah, and contemplation alludes to the Haqiqah itself. The Shariah is servanthood, the Tariqah is selflessness, and the Haq- iqah is freedom in the midst of both. Become free of everything in the realm of being- be that Heart-taker's " companion of the cave. "

As for the significance of: They said, 'If he is stealing, a brother of his stole before', it is that the heart, alone from among all of the faculties, had been prepared for this meaning beforehand, and so they continued not to recognise the two [Joseph and his brother], accusing the two before their father in order to actualise what they sought and to seek a pleasure beyond the one they sought [ḍ]. It is said that Abraham, God's blessings and peace be upon him, used to own a belt which the eldest of his children would inherit. So after Isaac, Joseph's paternal aunt inherited it since she was the eldest of the children, and she had also raised Joseph after the death of his mother Rachel. But when he came of age, Jacob wanted to take [possession of] it [the belt] from her, but she would not renounce [possession of] it. So she tied the belt underneath his clothes, peace be upon him, and then said that she had lost the belt. When it was found upon him [Jacob], it was handed over to her and Jacob left it with her until she died. This [belt] is an allusion to the station of chivalry which he [Jacob] inherited from Abraham the spirit before the station of sanctity, during the time of his youth. It was the reassured soul that had tied it around him, the one that had embraced it at the time of the death of Rachel the self-reproaching [soul]. Jacob's desire to strip her of this [belt] is an allusion to the fact that the intellect desires to be elevated to the [station of the] earning of gnoses and realities; and when he finds it [the intellect] described with qualities of excellence at the station of chivarly, he is satisfied with it and leaves him with the reassured soul wayfaring along the path of virtues until she [the reassured soul] passes away through annihilation in God at the station of sanctity. But God knows best. As for Joseph's keeping his words secret in his soul, that is his awareness of their inability to perceive his station and their falling short of his perfection, and these [words] were: you are a worse case.The one who requested to be taken by Joseph the heart in place of his brother the practical intellect was [the faculty of] estimation since it tends to interfere with rational concepts and yearns to be elevated to the horizons of the intellect; his [estimation's] judgement concerning these [concepts] in an improper way and their [the brothers'] inclination to his leadership of them, excluding the practical intellect, is on account of the correspondence between them in terms of their attachment to substrata and his [estimation's] wish to actualise for them their goals in the way of corporeal pleasures.

But when the heart found that his property, being the comprehension of rational meanings, with the practical intellect and not [with the faculty of] estimation: He said, 'God forbid that we should take anyone save him with whom we found our property; for then truly, if we were to take estimation in his place, and take him into our arms and cast on him what we cast to our brother [Benjamin], we would be committing a terrible injustice since we would be assigning something a place to which it does not belong.

Their despairing of him is their sensing that estimation would not be placed in charge of them and they would not be permitted to enjoy his exigencies or judgement. The most senior of them who reminded them of the pledge they had given to their father, [the pledge] being the conviction of faith, and [who reminded them] of their failure regarding Joseph when estimation had ruled, was reflection (fikr); that is why the exegetes he was the one who made the fairest decision regarding Joseph and prevented them from killing him. As for his words, So I will never leave this land until my father permits me, this means I shall not make any move without the judgement of the intellect, as opposed to estimation, until I die.