Jalal al-Din Rumi, Maulana, 1207-1273; Mevleviyeh; Sufi literature
So he left Balkh, as the prophet (Muhammed) had fled from Mekka to
Medīna. His son Jelālu-’d-Dīn was then five, and the elder brother,
‘Alā’u-’d-Dīn, seven years old.
The people everywhere on his road, hearing of his approach or
forewarned in dreams of his coming, flocked to meet him and do him
honour. Thus he drew near to Bagdād. Here he was met by the great
Sheykh Shahābu-’d-Dīn, ‘Umer, Suherverdī, the most eminent man of the
place, deputed by the Caliph Musta’zim to do him honour. He became the
guest of the Sheykh.
The Caliph sent him a present of three thousand sequins, but he
declined the gift as being money unlawfully acquired. He also refused
to visit the Caliph; but consented to preach in the great mosque after
the noon service of worship on the following Friday, the Caliph being
present. In his discourse he reproached the Caliph to his face with his
evil course of life, and warned him of his approaching slaughter by the
Moguls with great cruelty and ignominy. The Caliph again sent him rich
presents in money, horses, and valuables, but he refused to accept them.
Before Bahā’u-’d-Dīn quitted Bagdād, intelligence was received there of
the siege of Balkh, of its capture, and of its entire destruction, with
its twelve thousand mosques, by the Mogul army of five hundred thousand
men commanded by Jengīz in person (in A.H. 608, A.D. 1211). Fourteen
thousand copies of the Qur’ān were destroyed, fifteen thousand students
and professors of the law were slain, and two hundred thousand adult
male inhabitants led out and shot to death with arrows.
Bahā’u-’d-Dīn went from Bagdād to Mekka,[7] performed the greater
pilgrimage there, proceeding thence to Damascus, and next to Malatia
(Melitene, on the Upper Euphrates), where, in A.H. 614 (A.D. 1217),
he heard of the death of Jengīz. The Seljūqī Sultan, ‘Alā’u-’d-Dīn
Keyqubād, was then sovereign of the land of Rome (Rūm, _i.e._, Asia
Minor), and was residing at Sīwās (Sebaste). In A.H. 620 (A.D. 1223)
Sultan Jelālu-’d-Dīn, the dispossessed monarch of Kh’ārezm (Chorasmia)
was killed in a battle fought by him in Azerbāyjān (Atropatene) against
the Sultans of Rome, Syria, and Egypt, when his forces were totally
defeated. And thus ended that great dynasty, after ruling about a
hundred and forty years.
Bahā’u-’d-Dīn went from Malatia and remained four years near Erzinjān
(the ancient Aziris, on the Western Euphrates), in Armenia, at a
college built for him by a saintly lady, ‘Ismet Khātūn. She was the
wife of the local sovereign, Melik Fakhru-’d-Dīn. She and her husband
both died, and then Bahā’u-’d-Dīn passed on to Larenda (in Cataonia),
in Asia Minor, and remained there about seven years at the head of a
college, the princess Melika’i-Jihān, his mother, being still with him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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