Jalálu'd-Dín married at Lárinda, when about twenty-one years of age, a lady named Gawhar (“Pearl”), the daughter His family. of Lálá Sharafu'd-Dín of Samarqand. She bore him two sons, 'Alá'u'd-Dín and Bahá'u'd-Dín Sulṭán Walad. The former was killed at Qonya in a riot, which also resulted in the death of Jalálu'd-Dín's spiritual director, Shamsu'd-Dín of Tabríz (Shams-i-Tabríz), while the latter, born in A.D. 1226, is remarkable as being the author of “the earliest important specimen of West-Turkish poetry that we possess”—to wit, 156 couplets in the Rabáb­náma , or “Book of the Rebeck,” a mathnawí poem composed in A.D. 1301. The late Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, who gives further particulars about this poem, as well as other interesting facts about its author and his father, has translated a consider­able portion of it into English verse, as well as some ghazals by the same author. * At a later date Jalálu'd-Dín (having apparently lost his first wife) married again, and by this second marriage had two more children, a son and a daughter. He died in A.D. 1273, and was buried in the mausoleum erected over his father's remains in A.D. 1231 by 'Alá'u'd-Dín Kay-qubád, the Seljúq Sulṭán of Qonya.*

Jalálu'd-Dín seems to have studied the exoteric sciences chiefly with his father until the death of the latter in A.D. 1231, when he went for a time to Aleppo and Damascus to seek further instruction. About this time he came under the influence of one of his father's former pupils, Shaykh Bur­hánu'd-Dín of Tirmidh, who instructed him in the mystic lore of “the Path,” and after the death of this eminent saint Shams-i-Tabríz. he received further esoteric teaching from the above-mentioned Shams-i-Tabríz, a “weird figure,” as Mr. Nicholson calls him, * “wrapped in coarse black felt, who flits across the stage for a moment and disappears tragically enough.” This strange personage, said to have been the son of that Jalálu'd-Dín “Naw-Musulmán,” whose zeal for Islám and aversion from the tenets of the Assassins whose pontiff he was supposed to be has been already described (pp. 455-456 supra), had earned by his extensive and flighty wanderings the nickname of Paranda (“the Flier”). Red-house * describes him as of an “exceedingly aggressive and domineering manner,” and Sprenger * as “a most disgusting cynic,” but Nicholson * has best summed up his characteristics in the following words: “He was comparatively illiterate, but his tremendous spiritual enthusiasm, based on the conviction that he was a chosen organ and mouthpiece of Deity, cast a spell over all who entered the enchanted circle of his power. In this respect, as in many others, for example, in his strong passions, his poverty, and his violent death, Shams-i-Tabríz curiously resembles Socrates; both imposed themselves upon men of genius, who gave their crude ideas artistic expression; both proclaim the futility of external knowledge, the need of illumination, the value of love; but wild raptures and arrogant defiance of every human law can ill atone for the lack of that ‘sweet reasonableness’ and moral grandeur which distinguish the sage from the devotee.”

According to Shamsu'd-Dín Aḥmad al-Aflákí's Manáqibu'l-'Arifín (of which a considerable portion, translated into English, is prefixed, under the title of “Acts of the Adepts,” to Sir James Redhouse's versified translation of the First Book of the Mathnawí), * Jalálu'd-Dín's acquaintance with this mysterious personage (whom he had previously seen, but not spoken with, at Damascus) began at Qonya in December, 1244, * lasted with ever-increasing intimacy for some fifteen months, and was brought to an abrupt close in March, 1246, by the violent death of Shams-i-Tabríz to which reference has already been made. The tall, drab-coloured felt hat and wide cloak still worn by members of the Mevleví Dervish order, as well as the The Mevleví or “dancing” Dervishes. peculiar gyrations which have earned for them amongst Europeans the name of “Dancing Der­vishes,” are said by al-Aflákí to have been insti­tuted at this time by Jalálu'd-Dín in memory of his lost friend, though a few pages further on (pp. 27-28) he adds other reasons for the introduction of the chanting and dancing practised by his disciples.

It is uncertain at what date the great mystical Mathnawí was begun. It comprises six books, * containing in all, according to al-Aflákí's statement, 26,660 couplets. * The second book was begun in A.D. 1263, two years after the com­pletion of the first, when the work was interrupted by the death of the wife of Ḥasan Ḥusámu'd-Dín, the author's favourite pupil and amanuensis. The first book, therefore, was ended in A.D. 1261, but we have no means of knowing how long it was in the writing. In any case it was probably begun some considerable time after the death of Shams-i-Tabríz, and was completed before the end of A.D. 1273, when the death of Jalálu'd-Dín took place. * Its composition, therefore, probably extended over a period of some ten years. Each book except the first begins with an exhortation to Ḥasan Ḥusámu'd-Dín ibn Akhí Turk, who is likewise spoken of in the Arabic preface of Book I as having inspired that portion also. As he became Jalálu'd-Dín's assistant and amanuensis on the death of his predecessor, Saláḥu'd-Dín Ferídún Zar-kúb (“the Gold­beater”), in A.D. 1258, it is probable that the Mathnawí was begun after this period.

It is unnecessary to say more about Jalálu'd-Dín's life, of which the most detailed and authentic account is that given by Miracles attributed to Jalálu'd-Dín. al-Aflákí in his “Acts of the Adepts,” partly translated by Redhouse. It is true that many of the miraculous achievements of Jalálu'd-Dín and his predecessors and successors which are recorded in this work are quite incredible, and that it is, moreover, marred by not a few anachronisms and other inconsistencies, but it was begun only forty-five years after the Master's death (viz., in A.D. 1318) and finished in 1353; and was, moreover, com­piled by a disciple living on the spot from the most authoritative information obtainable, at the express command of Jalálu'd-Dín's grandson, Chelebí Amír 'Árif, the son of Bahá'u'd-Dín Sulṭán Walad.

As regards the lyrical poems which form the so-called Díwán of Shams-i-Tabríz, it is, as Nicholson points out The Díwán of Shams-i-Tabríz. (op. cit., p. xxv and n. 2 ad calc.), implied by Dawlatsháh that they were chiefly composed during the absence of Shams-i-Tabríz at Damas­cus, while Riḍá-qulí Khán regards them rather as having been written in memoriam; but Nicholson's own view, which is probably correct, is “that part of the Díwán was composed while Shams-i-Tabríz was still living, but probably the bulk of it belongs to a later period.” He adds that Jalálu'd-Dín “was also the author of a treatise in prose, entitled Fíhi má fíhi, which runs to 3,000 bayts, and is addressed to Mu'ínu'd-Dín, the Parwána of Rúm.” This work is very rare, and I cannot remember ever to have seen a copy.

Both the Mathnawí and the Díwán are poetry of a very high order. Of the former it is commonly said in Persia that Rank and worth of the Mathnawí. it is “the Qur'án in the Pahlawí (i.e., Persian) language,” while its author describes it, in the Arabic Preface to Book I, as containing “the Roots of the Roots of the Roots of the Religion, and the Discovery of the Mysteries of Reunion and Sure Know­ledge.” “It is,” he continues, “the supreme Science of God, the most resplendent Law of God, and the most evident Proof of God. The like of its Light is ‘as a lantern wherein is a lamp,’ * shining with an effulgence brighter than the Morning. It is the Paradise of the Heart, abounding in fountains and foliage; of which fountains is one called by the Pilgrims of this Path Salsabíl, * but by the possessors of [supernatural] Stations and God-given powers ‘good as a Station,’ * and ‘Best as a noon-day halting-place.’ * Therein shall the righteous eat and drink, and therein shall the virtuous rejoice and be glad. Like the Nile of Egypt, it is a drink for the patient, but a sorrow to the House of Pharaoh and the unbelievers: even as God saith, * ‘Thereby He leadeth many astray, and thereby He guideth many aright; but He misleadeth not thereby any save the wicked.’” It is written throughout in the apocopated hexameter Ramal metre, i.e., the foot Fá'ilátun six times repeated in each bayt (verse), but shortened or “apocopated” to Fá'ilát at the end of each half-verse, and, as its name implies, rhymes in doublets. It contains a great number of rambling anecdotes of the most various character, some sublime and dignified, others grotesque and even (to our ideas) disgusting, interspersed with mystical and theosophical digressions, often of the most abstruse character, in sharp contrast with the narrative portions, which, though presenting some peculiarities of diction, are as a rule couched in very simple and plain language. The book is further remarkable as beginning abruptly, without any formal doxology, with the well-known and beautiful passage translated by the late Professor E. H. Palmer, under the title of the “Song of the Reed”; a little book less widely known than it deserves, and containing, with other translations and original verses of less value, a paraphrase, not only of the opening canto of the Mathnawí, or “Song of the Reed” proper, but of several of the stories from the beginning of Book I. These, though rather freely translated, are both graceful and thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the poem, and I regard them as one of the most successful attempts with which I am acquainted at rendering Persian verse into English.