At the end of three months’ seclusion together, passed in religious,
scientific, and spiritual disquisitions and investigations,
Shemsu-’d-Dīn became satisfied that he had never met Jelāl’s equal.
2.
When Shemsu-’d-Dīn was quite worn out by a series of divine
manifestations and the consequent ecstasies, he used to break away,
hide himself, and work as a day-labourer at the water-wheels of the
Damascus gardens, until his equanimity would be restored. Then he would
return to his studies and meditations.
In his supplications to God, he was constantly inquiring whether there
was not in either world, corporeal and spiritual, one other saint
who could bear him company. In answer thereto, there came at length
from the unseen world the answer, that the one holy man of the whole
universe who could bear him company was the Lord Jelālu-’d-Dīn of Rome.
On receiving this answer, he set out at once from Damascus, and went in
quest of his object to the land of Rome (Asia Minor).
3.
Chelebī Emīr ‘Ārif related that his father, Sultan Veled, told him that
one day, as a trial and test, Shemsu-’d-Dīn requested Jelāl to make him
a present of a slave. Jelāl instantly went and fetched his own wife,
Kirā Khātūn, who was as extremely beautiful as virtuous and saintlike,
offering her to him.
To this act of renunciation Shemsu-’d-Dīn replied: “She is my most
esteemed sister. What I want is a youth to wait on me.” Jelāl thereupon
produced his own son, Sultan Veled, who, he said, would be proud to
carry the shoes of Shems, placing them before him for use when required
for a walk abroad. Again Shems objected: “He is as my son. But,
perhaps, you will supply me with some wine. I am accustomed to drink
it, and am not comfortable without it.”
Jelāl now took a pitcher, went himself to the Jews’ ward of the city,
and returned with it full of wine, which he set before Shems.
“I now saw,” continued Sultan Veled in his recital, “that
Shemsu-’d-Dīn, uttering an intense cry, rent his garment, bowed down to
Jelāl’s feet, lost in wondering admiration at this implicit compliance
with the behests of a teacher, and then said: ‘By the truth of the
First, who had no beginning, the Last, who will have no end, there
never has been, from the commencement of creation, and there never,
until the end of time, will be, in the universe of substance, a lord
and master, heart-captivating and Muhammed-like, as thou art.’”
He now bowed down again, declared himself a disciple to Jelāl,
and added: “I have tested and tried to the utmost the patient
long-suffering of our Lord; and I have found his greatness of heart to
be totally unlimited by any bounds.”
4.
Jelāl is reported to have said: “When Shemsu-’d-Dīn first came, and I
felt a mighty spark of love for him lighted up in my heart, he took
upon himself to command me in the most despotic and peremptory manner.