قَالَ هِىَ رَٰوَدَتْنِى عَن نَّفْسِى ۚ وَشَهِدَ شَاهِدٌ مِّنْ أَهْلِهَآ إِن كَانَ قَمِيصُهُۥ قُدَّ مِن قُبُلٍ فَصَدَقَتْ وَهُوَ مِنَ ٱلْكَـٰذِبِينَ
Qaala hiya raawadatnee 'an nafsee wa shahida shaahidum min ahlihaa in kaana qameesuhoo qudda min qubulin fasadaqat wa huwa minal kaazibeen
but he said, ‘She tried to seduce me.’ A member of her household suggested, ‘If his shirt is torn at the front, then it is she who is telling the truth and he who is lying,
He said, "She is the one who tried to seduce me." And a witness from her own household testified: "If his shirt is torn from the front, then she has told the truth and he is among the liars.
Yusuf's defence is one sentence long, and everything decisive after it is said by someone from the accuser's own family, the side with every reason to protect her. The evidence offered is a rule of inference from the torn cloth, which direction the tear runs, in place of an account of what anyone saw. Commentators divided over who spoke, some holding him a grown kinsman, others an infant made to speak.