Eighty years—both figures are transmitted from al-Ḥasan.
Others say it was thirty-five years; this is the view of Qatādah.
Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq states: “They relate that he was separated from him for eighteen years.” He added: “The People of the Book claim the separation lasted forty years.”

The course of the narrative itself allows us to come up with an approximate figure. The woman attempted to seduce Joseph when he was a young man of seventeen, according to more than one authority. He refused her, after which he remained in prison for “a few years”—seven according to ʿIkrimah and others. He was then released, and the seven years of abundance followed. When the people were afflicted by the subsequent seven years of drought, his brothers came to buy provisions: in the first year they came alone; in the second they returned with their brother Benjamin; in the third Joseph disclosed himself to them and told them to bring the whole family. They all arrived, and, as the Qur’an says, “When they entered upon Joseph, he drew his parents close to himself” and “he said, ‘Enter Egypt, Allah willing, in security.’”

Some have treated the wording as an instance of transposition, taking the intended order to be: “Enter Egypt, and he drew his parents close to himself.” Ibn Jarīr judged this weak—and rightly so. Others, among them al-Suddi, said that Joseph first met them and lodged them in a camp of tents, and that when they neared the gate of Egypt he said: “Enter Egypt, Allah willing, in security.” Yet it may equally be said that no such rearrangement is needed, for the command “Enter” can carry the sense of “settle and reside,” so that the phrase means: “Settle in Egypt, Allah willing, in safety”—a sound and elegant reading as well.

According to the People of the Book, when Jacob reached the land of “Goshen”—the district of Bilbīs—Joseph went out to meet him. Jacob had sent his son Judah ahead to convey the good news of his arrival. They further relate that the king granted them the land of Goshen as a place in which they could dwell with their flocks and herds.

A number of exegetes mention that when the arrival of the Prophet of Allah Jacob—who is Israel—drew near, Joseph wished to go out to receive him, and the king himself rode out with his troops in honor of Joseph and in veneration of the Prophet of Allah Israel. Joseph prayed for the king, and, by the blessing of Jacob’s arrival, Allah lifted from the people of Egypt what remained of the years of famine. Allah knows best.

As for the total number who accompanied Jacob—his sons and their offspring—Abū Isḥāq al-Sabīʿī relates from Abū ʿUbaydah, from Ibn Masʿūd, that they were sixty-three persons. Mūsā ibn ʿUbaydah narrates from Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Shaddād, that they were eighty-three. Abū Isḥāq, from Masrūq, says they entered numbering three hundred and ninety persons. They further say that when they departed with Moses they were more than six hundred thousand fighting men. In the text of the People of the Book they are said to have been seventy souls, and they list them by name.

Allah, exalted be He, says: “He raised his parents upon the throne.” Some say his mother had already died, as is held by the scholars of the Torah. Other commentators say Allah brought her back to life. Yet others maintain that it was his aunt Laylā, for an aunt holds the rank of a mother. Ibn Jarīr (1) and others, however, contend that the outward sense of the Qur’an indicates that his mother was alive on that day; consequently, the reports of the People of the Book that conflict with this are not to be relied upon. This is a strong position, and Allah knows best.