Of all the narratives of Anbiyah Kiram in the Quran e Majeed, Allah describes the story of Yusuf Nabi as the most beautiful. Yusuf Nabi was the son of Yaqub Nabi who was the son of Is-haq. (Yaqub Nabi is also known as Israel.)
Yaqub Nabi had twelve sons, and amongst them his favorite were Yusuf and his brother Banyamin, from his beautiful wife Raheel. This made their brothers jealous.
In the Quran, the story of Yusuf begins with a dream that he had. Filled with excitement he ran to his father and related the dream:
“O my father! Verily, I saw (in a dream) eleven stars and the sun and the moon, I saw them performing sajda for me.” (Ch 12:4)
Yaqub Nabi’s face lit up. He foresaw that Yusuf would be the one through whom the prophecy of his grandfather, Ibrahim Nabi, and through whom Allah’s message would spread to mankind. He interpreted the eleven stars as Yusuf’s eleven brothers and the moon and sun as his father and mother.
However, Yaqub Nabi was well aware of the jealousy of Yusuf’s brothers, so he warned him against relating the dream to his brothers. “O my son! Relate not your vision to your brothers, lest they arrange a plot against you. Verily! Satan is to man an open enemy! Thus will your Lord choose you and teach you the interpretation of dreams and perfect His Favor on you and on the progeny of Yaqub….” (Ch 12:5-6)
Yusuf’s brothers were jealous of his talents and the fact that their father favored him above them. They plotted to kill him, “Truly, Yusuf and his brother (Banyamin) are loved more by our father than we, but we are usbah (a strong group). Our father is in plain error. Kill Yusuf or cast him out to some other land, so that the favor of your father may be given to you alone, and after that you will be righteous folk.”
But one of the brothers felt sorry for Yusuf, and suggested that instead of killing him they throw him into a well so that a caravan might pick him up and take him as a slave.
They asked their father’s permission to take Yusuf out to play. Yaqub granted them permission on the condition that they would keep watch over him. The brothers proceeded with their plan and dropped him into a well. They brought back Yusuf’s shirt, covered with sheep’s blood, to tell their father that wolves had eaten Yusuf. Yaqub said “Nay, but your ownselves have made up a tale. So (for me), patience is most fitting.”
In Daaim ul Islam, Syedna Qazil Noman has cited the following incident from Imam Mohammed ul BaqirSA. The ImamSA states that the cause of what befell on Yaqub Nabi-the loss of Yusuf Nabi- was his negligence to a “sa’il” who came asking for help on his doorstep. The “sa’il” was a prophet of Allah who sought help from Anbiya only when he had no other choice for survival. Due to Yaqub Nabi’s negligence, he fainted on his doorsteps until a passerby helped him. Allah conveyed to Yaqub through his angel that he would have to pay for this error. It was the next morning that Yaqub’s sons came asking him permission to take along Yusuf with them.