Yusuf — the whole surah, told in order

The Quran mentions many prophets, but the mentions are scattered — a scene of Musa here, an episode of Ibrahim there, a prayer of Nuh somewhere else. Only one story is told whole, from beginning to end, in a single surah. And the surah says of itself:

We relate to you the best of narrations in what We have revealed to you of this Quran, although you were, before it, among the unaware.

Quran 12:3. Ahsan al-qasas — the most beautiful of narrations. And it begins with a child's dream.

When Yusuf said to his father, "O my father, indeed I have seen eleven stars and the sun and the moon; I saw them prostrating to me."

Quran 12:4.

A boy wakes and tells his father a dream. Nothing could be more ordinary. But Yaqub was himself a prophet, and he understood the dream at the moment he heard it. He did not give the boy its meaning. He gave him an instruction:

He said, "O my son, do not relate your vision to your brothers, or they will contrive against you a plan. Indeed Shaytan is to man a manifest enemy."

Quran 12:5.

Notice what he did not say. He did not say his brothers were wicked. He did not say to keep away from them. He said only: do not tell them this — and for the reason he named Shaytan, not the brothers. A father who knows his ten sons, and who still will not put their names next to the evil; he names only the door the evil comes in by.

Envy needs something to look at. Left with nothing, it sleeps. The dream would have woken it.

Then Yaqub said what a father can say to a son when he knows the road ahead is not easy:

And thus will your Lord choose you and teach you the interpretation of events, and complete His favour upon you and upon the family of Yaqub, as He completed it upon your fathers before, Ibrahim and Ishaq. Indeed, your Lord is Knowing and Wise.

Quran 12:6.

And immediately after, in verse seven, the Quran speaks straight to the reader:

Certainly were there in Yusuf and his brothers signs for those who ask.

Quran 12:7. Meaning: what follows is not merely a family's affair. There are answers in it to questions you have.