The Qur'anic Story of Joseph: Plot, Themes, and Characters

For its sheer readability, the Qur’anic story of Joseph, told in S. 12, is perhaps unsurpassed in the whole of the Qur’in. The less than one hundred verses of the narrative1 telescope many years, present an amazing variety o f scenes and characters in a tightly-knit plot, and offer a dramatic illustration of some of the fundamental themes of the Qur’in. The present article, as the title indicates, is a study of selected aspects of the sura. The study is mainly literary in character. As such it will not deal with that part of the sura (the concluding part, chiefly) in which the Qur’in seeks to apply the story to the Meccan situation of Muhammad’s time? I have thus limited the scope of this inquiry in order to bring into relief, with reference to S. 12, a sorely neglected aspect of the Qur’in, namely, the literary aspect. It is not necessary to reproduce the story in detail or in outline; any of the well-known translations of the Qur’in can be used for purposes of reference. The translation of the Qur’anic verses cited is my own.