Folios A and B from the "Five Treasures" (Panj Ganj) of Jami

About this work

The recto of this album leaf illustrates two episodes from the story of Joseph and Zulaykha. In the first, Zulaykha awaits Joseph in the house she has built for them. She has painted the walls with romantic scenes and dressed herself alluringly with the intention of seducing him. The artist has discreetly inserted his name and the painting’s date in a brick of the house at the upper left. The virtuous Joseph, with flaming halo and eternally youthful features, rejects the married woman’s advances, but many years later, when Zulaykha is an elderly widow, they are reunited. In the second episode we see the aged Zulaykha meeting Joseph. His prayers will restore her to youthful beauty, and the two will finally be joined as lovers. The section of text on the verso from Jami’s poem of Joseph and Zulaykha, written diagonally in the margins, describes the beauties of Zulaykha’s house, in which she intends to seduce Joseph. It includes the following verses: Jeweled lamps on the walls were hung; And odorous herbs were beneath them flung. She gathered together all things most fair, And unrolled the carpet of pleasure there. But amid the charms of the sumptuous hall She longed only for…