From the epistemology of a narrative paragon, Joseph in the the Qurʾan, we move on in this chapter to consider three case studies, one from each of the following genres: tafsīr, sīrah and hadith. These are all still emphatically religious textual corpora. The aim is to evince how echoes of the Joseph story inflect each of the three examples – the stories of Zayd ibn Ḥārithah, Salmān al-Fārisī and the slander against ʿĀʾishah, which are centred on prophecy, the early mission of Muḥammad, revelation and the ethics of communal conduct.

Tafsīr: The Seal of the Prophets and Accounts of Zayd ibn Ḥārithah

Early exegetical and biographical sources report that in Mecca the Prophet Muḥammad took one Zayd ibn Ḥārithah as his adopted son. This story is analysed in great detail by David Powers in two recent books. One fascinating element in Powers’ interpretation of this multi-part narrative, assembled mostly from the tradition of Qurʾanic exegesis, is the fact that he views it in significant ways as a rewriting of the story of Joseph. In Powers’ reading, the story of Joseph is the underlying intertext of the way the story of Zayd is inflected, shaped and relayed in tradition. Certainly, many elements of the two narratives bear comparison. In sum, they are both stories of family separation and recognition. But the family romance does not follow a standard course such as to end in a point of final resolution – of recognition and stable reunion. Indeed, in the story of Zayd ibn Ḥārithah, the main predicate of anagnorisis is not the establishment of kinship – rather a claim of kinship is repudiated – but the establishment of Muḥammad as the Khātam al-Nabiyyīn (‘the Seal of the Prophets’), a quite different kind of validated relationship. This crucial phrase in revelation follows up and qualifies – even intimates at an abrogation of – what Muḥammad had said before to Zayd years earlier, very humanly, when his father had come to reclaim him: ‘I am the man you know full well.’ With time, this claim of affection and adoptive kinship was abrogated by what came to be considered a critical issue of Islamic prophetic doctrine. One anagnorisis is effectively superseded by another.