The key and the palace chase: the succesful alliance between Bihzad and Jami

In 1483, a few years before Bihzad completed his painting, the poet Jami had finished a narrative poem of no less than 4032 verses, entitled Yusuf-u Zulaykha. Here, Zulaykha is presented in an entirely different light than before: she is the focus of the poem.

Jami reframed the story of Yusuf and Zulaykha and turned it into a love story with mystical overtones. Zulaykha stands for the desperate Sufi lover, who aims for mystical reunion with the unattainable divine beloved, while Yusuf, with his unearthly beauty, represents in Jami the divine beloved. By the time of Jami, the figure of the Sufi lover, the seeker on the mystical path, was a stock figure in Persian literature, but rarely personified by a woman.

As in Saʿdi’s anecdote, in Jami’s version of the story Zulaykha is initially portrayed as a sinful creature as well, distracted by blind lust for Yusuf’s beauty. However, Jami allows for a happy ending: Zulaykha is ultimately redeemed. After many tribulations, she finds the desired union with Yusuf, a union which is no longer tainted by lower passions.

It is Jami who goes into much detail about the palace that was especially built to help Zulaykha to seduce Yusuf. This palace had seven chambers, and each chamber was exquisitely decorated with tapestry and paintings on the wall, and images of Yusuf and Zulaykha themselves, as a not-so-subtle encouragement from Zulaykha.

And this is the palace that Bihzad choose to paint: reflecting not so much the text of the Bustan which he is actually illustrating, but much more the contents of the freshly composed _Yusuf-u Zulaykha_written by his fellow courtier, the poet Jami.

This is further emphasized by two clues in the painting. One is the key Yusuf seems to be holding in his hand, a key to open all the doors in the palace in which he has been trapped. It is a metaphorical key, since Jami describes how Yusuf’s pointing finger miraculously worked as a key to enable him to escape Zulaykha and to save himself from falling into her net.