YUSUF’S PERSONAL DESCRIPTION, QUALITIES, LAW, MIR­ACLES, TRADE, THE LENGTH OF HIS SEPARATION, DURATION OF HIS LIFE, AND THE LOCALITY OF HIS AUGUST TOMB.

He had curled ringlets, a white complexion, and a sym­metrical body. His blessed eyes were large and open; when he smiled his countenance was lit up, and when he spoke rays issued from his mouth. His face is said to have resembled that of Adam, u. w. b., etc., as it had been before his fall.

He was patient and grave, an interpreter of visions, of secret matters, and of future events. He honoured and respected U’lamâ and those who are invested with the robe of dignity; he was the noble son of a noble parent. The most abundant salutations and greetings to our prophet and to him.

He followed the customs of his ancestors, and deviated by no means from them. He worked many miracles, and when he was asked for one at the time of admonishing Qabûs Bin Masâb, he prayed, whereon the leaves of a green tree, which was near the throne of the king, were trans­muted into variegated silk. On another occasion a blind child was brought to him; his lordship took off the veil from the face of the infant, looked at it, and it obtained sight. Zuleikha also was, from a state of old age and weakness, by the life-imparting breath of his lordship, restored to the freshness and vigour of youth, as has been mentioned above.

It is said that in his youth he was inclined to commerce, and had surrendered his capital to trustees who were to trade therewith for him; but when he ascended the throne of dignity he engaged in no other duties besides those of government and prophetship.

Walbi states that the time of his separation amounted to twenty-two years, A’bdullah Bin Shudub, however, says that it lasted seventy, and Sari Bin Yahia seventy-seven years. Hasan Bosri and other followers assert that it con­sisted of eighty years, but Salmân Pârsi,* and the majority of theologians—u. w. b., etc.—are of opinion that the period of the departure and separation of his lordship was forty years, and this view has obtained currency among historians.

It is related that in the Pentateuch the duration of his life is set down at one hundred and ten years.* Hamâm Bin Munia states that he attained the age of one hundred and seven, Muhammad Bin Esahâq one hundred and eighteen, and Tha’alebi gives him in the ‘A’râis’ one hundred and twenty years, which is also the opinion adopted by the chief chroniclers.

It is added that when he bade farewell to the corporeal world, his brothers took the coffin to the distance of one mile from the buildings of the city and buried it in the river Nile. As the U’lamâ, the grandees, the nobles, and the middle classes of every locality, wished to have his tomb near them, a revolt well-nigh broke out, which would have involved Egypt in trouble; accordingly, the most intelligent persons considered it suitable to inter his pure body in the Nile, so that its blessings might redound upon the high and the low, the gentle and the simple, and so that, as the inhabitants of the world turn to the Ka’bah, the people of Egypt might likewise turn towards the water as the Qiblah of their aspirations. That treasure of beauty was for a long time resting at the bottom of the Nile, until Mûsa Kelim* —to whom be salutation and greeting—brought it out from that place and buried it in the field of the Friend, and the sepulchre of Esrâil, as shall be recorded in the narrative of Mûsa the prophet, if it pleaseth Allah the unique and the most glorious.