At Damascus, when a young student, Jelāl was frequently seen by
others to walk several arrow-flights’ distance in the air, tranquilly
returning to the terraced roof on which they were standing.
Those fellow-pupils were among his earliest believers and disciples.
74.
A friend of Jelāl’s once took leave of him at Qonya, and went to
Damascus. On his arrival there, he found Jelāl seated in a corner of
his room. Asking for an explanation of this surprising phenomenon,
Jelāl replied: “The men of God are like fishes in the ocean; they pop
up into view on the surface here and there and everywhere, as they
please.”
75.
Jelāl once met a Turk in Qonya, who was selling fox-skins in the
market, and crying them: “Dilku! Dilku!” (Fox! Fox! in Turkish.)
Jelāl immediately began to parody his cry, calling out in Persian: “Dil
kū! Dil kū!” (Heart, where art thou?) At the same time he broke out
into one of his holy waltzes of ecstasy.
76.
In the time of Sultan Veled (A.D. 1284-1312), a young man, of the
descendants of the Prophet, and son of the guardian of the holy
tomb of Muhammed at Medīna, came to Qonya with a company of his
fellow-descendants, belonging to that city. He was presented to Sultan
Veled, and became his disciple.
He wore a most singular head-dress. One end of his turban hung down
in front to below his navel; while the other end was formed into the
_sheker-āvīz_[19] of the Mevlevī dervishes.
When they had become somewhat intimate, Sultan Veled asked him how it
happened that he wore the _sheker-āvīz_ of the Mevlevis, when nobody
else but those dervishes wear it, in imitation of their founder, Jelāl.
The young man explained that his family were descended from the
Prophet. That the Prophet, on the night of his ascension to heaven,
after seeing God and many mysteries, had returned a certain distance,
and, as is well known, then went back to intercede with God for his
people. He now perceived, on the pinnacle of God’s throne, the ideal
portrait of a form, so beautiful, that he had not hitherto witnessed
anything so charming among the angels and inhabitants of heaven.