Of more singular interest is the incomplete _Poema de José_ or _Historia de Yusuf_, named by the writer, _Al-hadits de Jusuf_. This curious monument, due doubtless to some unconverted Mudéjar of Toledo, is the typical example of the literature called _aljamiada_. The language is correct Castilian of the time, and the metre, sustained for 312 stanzas, is the right Bercean: the peculiarity lies in the use of Arabic characters in the phonetic transcription. A considerable mass of such compositions has been discovered (and in the discovery England has taken part); but of them all the _Historia de Yusuf_ is at once the best and earliest. It deals with the story of Joseph in Egypt, not according to the Old Testament narrative, but in general conformity with the version found in the eleventh _sura_ of the Ku'rān, though the writer does not hesitate to introduce variants and amplifications of his own invention, as (stanza 31) when the wolf speaks to the patriarch whose son it is supposed to have slain. The persecution of Joseph by Potiphar's wife, who figures as Zulija (Zuleikah), is told with considerable spirit, and the mastery of the _cuaderna vía_ (the Bercean metre of four fourteen-syllabled lines rhymed together) is little short of amazing in a foreigner. At whiles an Arabic word creeps into the text, and the invocation of Allah, with which the poem opens, is repeated in later stanzas; but, taken as a whole, apart from the oriental colouring inseparable from the theme, there is a marked similarity of tone between the _Historia de Yusuf_ and its predecessors the "clerkly poems." An oriental subject handled by an Arab gave the best possible opportunity for introducing orientalism in the treatment; the occasion is eschewed, and the lettered Arab studiously follows in the wake of Berceo and the other Castilian models known to him. There could scarcely be more striking evidence of the irresistible progress of Castilian modes of thought and expression. The Arabic influence, if it ever existed, was already dead.