The Cloak of Joseph: A qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ Image in an Arabic and a Hebrew Poem of Desire

This study analyzes the use of a qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ narrative in two secular homoerotic poems of desire (ʿishq) written by religious authority figures in Muslim Spain, one in Arabic and one in Hebrew. In the Arabic poem, by the Cordoban jurist Ibn Ḥazm (384–456/994–1064), the lover compares the scent of the clothes of his absent beloved to a qiṣaṣ account in which the scent of the prophet Joseph’s cloak miraculously heals his grieving father’s blindness. Since a similar narrative appears in the Qurʾān, this study analyzes why Ibn Ḥazm chose the qiṣaṣ version over the qurʾānic account and what messages about human love and desire Ibn Ḥazm’s poem thereby sends. The Hebrew poem, by Ibn Ḥazm’s one-time friend Samuel ha-Nagid (993–1055), uses a similar reference to the cloak of Joseph, despite the fact that the frame-narrative appears in neither the Bible nor rabbinic literature. This study argues that Samuel may have borrowed the image from Ibn Ḥazm but that in doing so, his poem sends an entirely different message about love and lovers

The evolution and uses of the stories of the Prophets

This is a stable archival PDF of an open-access, peer-reviewed journal volume originally published at www.mizanproject.org/journal

Arabic and hebrew love poems in Al-Andalus

Arabic and Hebrew Love Poems in al-Andalus investigates a largely overlooked subset of Muslim and Jewish love poetry in medieval Spain: hetero- and homo-erotic love poems written by Muslim and Jewish religious scholars, in which the lover and his sensual experience of the beloved are compared to scriptural characters and storylines. This book examines the ways in which the scriptural referents fit in with, or differ from, the traditional Andalusian poetic conventions. The study then proceeds to compare the scriptural stories and characters as presented in the poems with their scriptural and exegetical sources. This new intertextual analysis reveals that the Jewish and Muslim scholar-poets utilized their sacred literature in their poems of desire as more than poetic ornamentation; in employing Qur?anic heroes in their secular verses, the Muslim poets presented a justification of profane love and sanctification of erotic human passions. In the Hebrew lust poems, which utilize biblical heroes, we can detect subtle, subversive, and surprisingly placed interpretations of biblical accounts