Sultan Walad

First Witness, Interested Party

Poetry by Sultan Walad 51
First attested
1291The Ibtidā-nāma, which dates itself: Sultan Walad says in the excursus that it was written between March and June of 1291, and Lewis's chronology fixes the composition at 4 March to 4 June. It is the earliest securely dated composition from his hand and the earliest narrative source for his father's life; Jalāl al-Dīn Homāʾī edited it critically in 1937 as the Mas̱nawī-yi Waladī. Earlier notices of him exist — he is named in Rumi's own letters, and Lewis reports that one partial manuscript of Shams's Maqālāt is probably in his handwriting — but none of them carries a date.
Claimed
1273asserted by Mevlevi tradition, and the English writing that follows it, dates the order's founding to Rumi's death in 1273 and casts Sultan Walad as the heir to a finished institution rather than its builder. Aflākī's Manāqib al-ʿārifīn — begun in 1318 at the request of Sultan Walad's son Ulu ʿĀrif Chalabī, and given its final recension in 1353 — is the text that fixed that picture, and general reference works still name Rumi himself as the order's founder.

The Mevlevi order is Sultan Walad's institution, not Rumi's — he took his father's seat only in 1284, and the earliest life of Rumi, his own Ibtidā-nāma of 1291, was written by the man building the order that book authorises.

Rumi's son: he built the order his father never founded, and wrote the earliest account of Rumi's life.

Born at Larende, now Karaman, in 1226, and given his grandfather's name. When Rumi died in 1273 the disciples kept Ḥusām al-Dīn Chalabī at their head; Sultan Walad deferred, and took his father's seat only after Ḥusām al-Dīn died in October 1284. He then posted a deputy — khalīfa — in every town holding disciples, and supplied the chain of teachers a formal order requires, which is why Franklin Lewis writes that the Mevleviyya owes its existence to him. Between 4 March and 4 June 1291 he composed the Ibtidā-nāma, some nine thousand lines, the first narrative account of his father's life and of the Shams years. Its author was building the order it authorises. The turning goes back to Rumi's lifetime; its ritual form does not — Lewis puts that no earlier than Pīr ʿĀdil Chalabī, who died in 1460.

Light

Aflākī transmits Rumi caressing him and saying he had come into the world for his son's sake: “these words of mine are my speech, whereas you are my action.” Lewis judges that without him Rumi's disciples would probably have dwindled.

Shadow

His own poem gives the seven years after 1284 to Karīm al-Dīn b. Baktamor — the master he would not name while the man lived. Aflākī and Sipahsālār had both read it and cut him from the succession, deliberately, Lewis judges, to magnify Sultan Walad.

Sources and verification4 sources · 9 links

Primary source

  • Sultan Walad (Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad-i Walad); ed. Jalāl al-Dīn Homāʾī, Mas̱nawī-yi Waladī, known in Iran as the Walad-nāma and by Turkish scholars as the Ibtidā-nāma, 1937, Tehran: Eqbāl, 1316 sh. Turkish translation by Abdülbâki Gölpınarlı as İbtidâ-nâme (Ankara: Güven; Konya: Turizm Derneği, 1976); French translation by Djamchid Mortazavi and Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch as La Parole secrète (Monaco: Le Rocher, 1988).His own verse chronicle of the family: the earliest narrative source for Bahāʾ al-Dīn, Rumi and Shams and for the formation of the community at Konya. It dates itself to the spring of 1291, names Karīm al-Dīn b. Baktamor as leader of the disciples for seven years, gives a chain of teachers running from Rābiʿa, Ḥallāj and Bisṭāmī down to Sultan Walad himself, and gives no account of Shams being murdered — the murder story enters a generation later with Aflākī. Cited here at second hand: every statement about its contents is taken from Lewis, who references it by page as SVE.

Scholarship

  • Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teaching and Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi, 2000, Oneworld, Oxford; revised edition 2008. Chapter 5, 'From Sun to Son', especially the section 'Sultan Valad: Son and Successor to Rumi', pp. 230-241; chapter 6, 'The Mythological Rumi', p. 248, for the dating of Aflākī's composition; and chapter 10, 'The Mevlevi Order', section 'Mevlevi Rituals', p. 461.Gives his dates as 1226-1312 and reports, from Aflākī, Sultan Walad naming Larende as his birthplace. Records that the disciples kept Ḥusām al-Dīn Chalabī at their head after Rumi's death in 1273, that Sultan Walad deferred to him, and that he took the seat only once Ḥusām al-Dīn died in October 1284 (Lewis's chronology; he also reports Aflākī's 4 November and Sipahsālār's 1285), thereafter appointing a khalīfa in every town holding a body of disciples. States that the Mevlevi order owes its existence to Sultan Walad, that without him the surviving disciples would probably have dwindled, and that he supplied the chain of teachers a formal Sufi order requires. Dates the Ibtidā-nāma to between 4 March and 4 June 1291 — in Gregorian only, with no Hijri equivalent anywhere in the book — reports that Sultan Walad says in the excursus that it was written between March and June of that year, calls it our first narrative picture of Rumi's life, puts it at over nine thousand lines, and says it was written with a hagiographical motive by the man promoting the order. Notes that Sultan Walad's own verse names Karīm al-Dīn b. Baktamor as leader (rahbar) of the disciples for the seven years after Ḥusām al-Dīn, while adding that Sultan Walad did not reveal his name until just before his death and so Karīm al-Dīn cannot have been the titular head, Sultan Walad himself having acted to outward eyes as head of the disciples; Aflākī and Sipahsālār, who had both read the poem, omit him from the succession, an omission Lewis calls quite deliberate and probably motivated by a desire to magnify Sultan Walad and consolidate the order's authority. And, citing Tahsin Yazıcı's 'Mawlawiyya' in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, states that the order's rituals did not assume their basic shape until the time of Pīr ʿĀdil Chalabī (d. 1460), while noting on that same page that the practice of samāʿ dates to Rumi's own lifetime.

The tradition itself

  • Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad-e Aflākī; trans. John O'Kane, The Feats of the Knowers of God (Manāqeb al-ʿārefīn), 2002, Leiden: Brill, Islamic History and Civilization 43. Chapter Seven, 'Bahāʾ al-Dīn Solṭān Valad', sections 1, 2 (pp. 547-49), 8 and 33; Chapter Three, section 220.The order's own account of itself, begun in 1318 at the request of Sultan Walad's son Ulu ʿĀrif Chalabī and given its final recension in 1353. Chapter Seven §8 has Rumi caressing his son and saying that his own coming into the world was for the son's sake, 'For all these words of mine are my speech, whereas you are my action'; §2 has Sultan Walad refusing the succession in favour of Ḥusām al-Dīn — 'The office of successor (khelafat) and the throne belong to you' — and treating him as the occupant of his father's seat for eleven complete years, so that even the order's own account puts Ḥusām al-Dīn between Rumi and Sultan Walad; §1 has Rumi telling him 'Of all people you resemble me most in physique and in character', records that Rumi gave him his own father's name, and says he came to rest beside his father in the shrine; §33 dates his death to the night before Saturday 10 Rajab 712. Chapter Three §220 has Sultan Walad naming Laranda as his birthplace. Karīm al-Dīn son of Baktemur appears once in the whole work, as a disciple of spiritual attainment, and never as a head of the order.

Further reading

  • Tahsin Yazıcı, 'Mawlawiyya', in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill), s.v. 'Mawlawiyya'The standard reference account of the Mevlevi order's institutional and ritual history, and Lewis's named authority for both halves of his page 461 — that the order's rituals did not take their basic shape until Pīr ʿĀdil Chalabī (d. 1460), and that the practice of samāʿ dates to Rumi's lifetime and this major ritual therefore descends for the most part from Rumi. Cited here at second hand through Lewis's parenthesis; I have not read the article and could not confirm its volume or fascicle date, so no year is given.

Linked entries

  • Transmitted intoRūmīAttested

    Almost every narrative detail of Rumi's life reaches a reader through his son: the Ibtidā-nāma of 1291 is the first account of it, and Sipahsālār and Aflākī, who wrote the other two, had both read him.

  • Derives fromThe Song of the ReedAttested

    His Rabāb-nāma, composed between April and August 1301, opens in deliberate imitation of the Masnavī's first lines — the bowed rabāb sounds the opening cry in place of the reed.

  • Set againstFīhi Mā FīhiAttested

    Rumi's Discourses are talk taken down by students; his son's Maʿārif is fifty-six sermons he composed as sermons, which is the difference between a poet overheard and a preacher at work.

  • Venerated inThe Tomb at KonyaAttested

    Aflākī says he came to rest beside his father in the shrine, and Gölpınarlı found no separate stone there — Rumi's marble sepulchre stands over both graves.

  • Received fromFīhi Mā FīhiAttested

    The teaching passes through him into an order, and these notes catch him young at it: in Discourse 10 he makes his father's excuses to Muʿīn al-Dīn Parwāna — Rumi's states vary, so he would rather visit the Amir than be visited — the son who would build the Mevlevi order, already handling the old man's callers.

  • Set againstReynold A. NicholsonAttested

    Two men who built the afterlife of Rumi's words. The son took his father's seat at Konya in 1284 and made an order out of them; the professor who never left Europe made a text — Persian, English and commentary, finished in 1940.

  • Gave rise toThe Tomb at KonyaTraditional

    Aflākī has ʿAlam al-Dīn Qayṣar come to Rumi's son for leave to raise the dome, at a cost he put at thirty thousand dirhams; the lodge that grew round the grave became the order Sultan Walad, not Rumi, actually built.

  • Credited withSamāʿTraditional

    Mevlevi tradition credits Rūmī's son with beginning to regulate the samāʿ, a process the order's own accounts see completed under Pīr ʿĀdil Çelebi (d. 1460).

  • Gave rise toThe Mevlevi SemâTraditional

    Mevlevi accounts credit Rumi's son and grandson with beginning to regulate the turning, and place its near-present form under Pîr Âdil Çelebi, head of the order from 1421 to 1460.

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