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Jalal al-Din Rumi, Maulana and Redhouse, James W. (James William), Sir
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.”