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Jalal al-Din Rumi, Maulana and Redhouse, James W. (James William), Sir
Shemsu-’d-Dīn of Tebrīz was surnamed the Sultan of Mendicants, the Mystery of God upon earth, the Perfect in word and deed. Some had styled him the Flier, because he travelled about so much; and others spoke of him as the Perfect One of Tebrīz.
He went about seeking for instruction, human and spiritual. He had visited many of the chief spiritual teachers of the world; but he had found none equal to himself. The teachers of all lands became, therefore, pupils and disciples to him.
He was always in quest of the beloved object of the soul (God). His corporeal frame he habited in coarsest felt, shrouding his eminent greatness from all eyes in what are really the jewelled robes of spirituality.
At Damascus it was, where he was then studying, that he first saw Jelālu-’d-Dīn by chance in a crowded market-place; but Jelāl, who was at that time a student also, avoided him.
Ultimately, he was led to Qonya in Jelāl’s traces, and first arrived there at dawn, on Saturday, the twenty-sixth of Jumāda-’l-ākhir, A.H. 642 (28th November, A.D. 1244), Jelāl being then professor at four colleges there. They met as is related in a former chapter (chap. iii. Nos. 8, 9).
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.