RECORD OF SOME MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS OMITTED IN THE PRECEDING NARRATIVE, AND ALSO OF YUSUF’S MARRIAGE WITH ZULEIKHA.
When the administration of the affairs of Egypt devolved upon Yusuf, and the A’ziz had removed the furniture of rest from the perishable to the eternal abode,* Riân Bin Valeed desired to make the disappointed Zuleikha happy, and proposed to Yusuf to marry her. Although protracted longing had made Zuleikha weak and lean, and her eyes had become white in her expectation of seeing Yusuf, the feathers and wings of the pea-fowl of her beauty had been broken by the hunter of love, and the tyranny of the unpropitious times had thrown the stone of separation upon her matrimonial affairs, she, nevertheless, expected and waited for a union, and was unable to sleep either day or night, on account of her desire for pleasant showers from the beneficent clouds of that moon-faced Kana’anite; and though she had [for a while] been Yusuf’s enemy, she opened her mouth in praises to the Benign Sovereign, when she perceived the willingness of Yusuf to comply with the wishes her friends had expressed to him:
Verses: Though our lover be unkind,
He is fixed in our heart and eye;
If he remembers us very rarely,
Let him recollect his obligations to us.
Let not his love to us decrease,
Let not our heart be merry when he grieves.
He ought to comply with his friends,
He ought to recollect afflicted hearts.
Whilst the king was trying to bring this matter to a conclusion, and Zuleikha was hopeful, a divine inspiration arrived to the following effect: ‘O veracious one, it is time for thee to assist that grief-stricken and bowed-down one, and to introduce her into thy private harem, since the banns of your marriage and the Fathehah* of your espousals have, by the decree of fate, been read in the heavenly assembly, and the knot of your conjunction and union has been tied. When Yusuf had been apprised of the decayed and feeble condition of Zuleikha, he implored the Lord of Glory to bestow upon her the days of youth again, and the verdure of the meadow of life:
Verses: Her dying beauty He revived,
To her spirit He gave the robe of joy,
To the dried-up river He restored water,
Which refreshed the garden of her youth;
From her camphor the musk of Tartary arose,
From her morning the dark night arose.*
When the prayer of Yusuf had been responded to, the flower of the rose-garden of Zuleikha’s beauty forthwith recovered its freshness; and its stature, which had, in consequence of the decree of fate, become curved like a bow, again resembled a tall cypress by the river-side of amenity, so that after the age of forty years she turned back to eighteen. By order of the Eternal Sovereign the matrimonial knot was tied between them according to the law of the Lord Ebrahim, u. w. b. etc.—
Verses: According to the rule of the Friend, and of Ya’qûb’s religion,
In a handsome manner and with lovely countenance
He married Zuleikha.
He obtained a pearl.
After all strangers had left the palace of the A’ziz both of them entered a private apartment, and reposed on a soft couch:
Verses: They united, body and soul, in such a way,
That soul from body and body from soul did not separate.
The king strung that pearl which we cannot string,
There are many words that we cannot sing.
When the tree of Zuleikha’s hopes was fertilized by the fruit of prosperity, the Lord and Creator of mankind presented her with three noble children, namely, two sons, who were called Meesha and Efrahim, and a daughter of happy presage who was surnamed Rahmat [i.e. Mercy]. Their progeny greatly increased in the world by the favour of God, which He bestoweth upon whom He willeth, and He is vast in His beneficence and most wise.