Part 1
Poetry and poetics
1 SolášĂ˘n Valad and the poetical order
Framing the ethos and praxis of poetry in the Mevlevi tradition after Rumi1
Franklin Lewis
Bahââ al-Din MoḼammad-e Valad, better known as SolášĂ˘n Valad (623â712 AH/1226â1312 CE), son of the famous Mowlânâ Jalâl al-Din Rumi, played a critical role in expounding his fatherâs teachings, crafting the public presentation of his family history, promoting and preserving its legacy, and structuring and expanding the operation of the lineage-based Mevlevi order beyond Konya during the four decades following Rumiâs death. SolášĂ˘n Valad was the author of a set of discourses, called a Maââref (a compilation of talks or statements, perhaps taken down in note form by disciples during his classes or lectures, like the Maââref of both Borhân al-Din MoḼaqqeq and Bahââ al-Din-e Valad, as well as Rumiâs Fihe mâ fih and Ĺ ams al-Din Tabriziâs Maqâlât);2 like his father, he composed a Divân, which in the edition of Aᚣĥar Rabbâni (Ḥâmed) contains about 13,000 lines, comprising 826 Persian ghazals, 8 Arabic ghazals, and 1 macaronic Persian-Arabic molammaâ, 15 Turkish ghazals, 32 qasidas, 9 qeášâes, 23 mosammaášs, and 454 robââis.3 Furthermore, again like his father, he composed a trilogy of maᚥnavis, namely, the Ebtedâ-nâme (also known as the Valad-nâme, or Maᚥnavi-ye Valadi) of approximately 10,000 lines, the Rabâb-nâme (ca. 8,000 lines), and the Entehâ-nâme (ca. 7,000 lines).4 While the Divân of SolášĂ˘n Valad is perhaps less than half the size of his fatherâs Divân,5 if we tally the three maᚥnavis of SolášĂ˘n Valad, taken cumulatively they will roughly match in length the renowned Maᚥnavi-ye maânavi of his father.6
SolášĂ˘n Valad reaffirmed the strong link established by his father between the practice of poetry and the Mevlevi tradition. The central place of poetry and music in the praxis of the order can be inferred from the writings of Jalâl al-Din Rumi and SolášĂ˘n Valad, and, during the latterâs lifetime, there were already individuals appointed to the post of âMaᚥnavi reciterâ (Maᚥnavi-xwân),7 so we know that the poems of Mowlânâ Rumi enjoyed a ritual, even quasi-scriptural role in the Mevlevi order.8 One might imagine a world in which Mowlânâ Rumiâs poetic effulgence was bracketed as sui generis, an ecstatic activity of the saint, divinely inspired and (quasi-)thaumaturgic, and therefore unique to the orderâs founder.9 When Ḥosâm al-Din Äelebi formally assumed the leadership of the community after Rumiâs death in 1273 (a capacity in which he had already been serving), he produced no poems of his own, although he had functioned as the muse for Rumiâs Maᚥnaviâand neither had Ĺ ams-e Tabrizi or ᚢalâḼ al-Din Zarkub left any verse works, so the orientation toward active poetic composition could well have been broken. But SolášĂ˘n Valad revived the close connection between the shaykh (or pust-neĹĄin) of the Mevlevi order, and the practice of poetry and music, simultaneously reaffirming the Persophilic orientation of the order which it would retain for some time. At the same time, SolášĂ˘n Valadâs Greek and Turkish verse opened the gates to poetry being composed in one or another Anatolian vernacular, as a teaching vehicle within the Mevlevi dervish community.
And yet, despite the immense poetic output of both Mowlânâ Jalâl al-Din Rumi and SolášĂ˘n Valad, the latterâs public pronouncements reflect a somewhat conflicted attitude toward poetry, and an anxiety about distinguishing between the poetry of saints and worldly poetry. Apparently, poetry and its performance had not lost the strong tinge of suspicion and immorality that discolored it in the eyes of some of the ulema. Despite all the poetry his father had composed, and its regular use in devotional and ritual contexts, SolášĂ˘n Valad still adopts an apologetic or defensive stance and is at pains to argue, in a passage of over fifty lines,10 that divine inspiration prompts his fatherâs (and presumably also his own) poetry, that the poetry of saints is a gloss (tafsir, ĹĄarḼ) on the Qurâan, as the saints have effaced themselves and act only through Godâs inspiration, moving across the page like pens held in the hands of God. In contrast, professional poets are not trying to show God, but to show off (xwod namââi-st piĹĄe-ye iťân); their verse is a scum of smelly garlic (taf-e sir).11
Mevlevi poetry was, then, born from a matrix that accepts the practice of poetry within the dervish community, but remains in theory hostile toward, or at least wary of, the practice of worldly or pecuniary poetry, a position held by Rumi and his father Bahââ al-Din-e Valad.12 There are, however, certain other trends that undercut this ideology, such as the fact that SolášĂ˘n Valadâalongside qasidas in praise (madḼ) of Mowlânâ (Q30) and Ḥosâm al-Din (a bahâriye, Q5), his marᚥiyes for ᚢalâḼ al-Din Zarkub (Q20) and Ḥosâm al-Din (Q31), and his religious admonitions in verse (Q2, Q12, Q13, Q19) or poems for Ramadan and âId al-Feášr (Q3)âhas also produced panegyrical qasidas, complete with praise (madḼ) and benedictions (doââ), and sometimes Ḽasb-e Ḽâl or ášalab-e Ḽosn petitions13 for sultans (Q23, dated Rabiâ I 680/summer 1281; Q17; Gh14; T1) and various officials, including the vazir ᚢâḼeb Faxr al-Din-e âAášĂ˘ (Qt3), Amirzâde Moâin al-Din Parvâne (Q22), Amirs (Q32, Q24, Q18, Q16, Q14, Q11, T10, R270), ᚢadr Akmal al-Din Moayyad-e Naxjavâni in Baghdad (Q29); Seljuk royal women, such as the Georgian princess Gorji Xâtun, wife of Moâin al-Din Parvâne and former wife of Sultan Ä iâᚥ al-Din Khosrow II (Q21), Fâášeme Xâtun (Q27), and Kumâj Xâtun, the wife of Sultan Rokn al-Din QeliÄ Arsalân IV (Q26); various men titled âAxiâ (Q25, Q28, T7); for the towns and notable people of Konya (Q10, Qt8), Aksaray (Ăqsarâ, Q9), Kayseri (Q21), and KĂźtahya (Qt9); or to welcome travelers (Q6, Q7, Q8), and so on.14 Thus, the association of the Mevlevi order with Ottoman officials, and the ceremonies of investiture of the Ottoman sultans, can be said to have its roots in, and to be sanctioned by, SolášĂ˘n Valadâs practice of panegyrical poetry, as distinct from his father, who avoided it.
Doubtless these panegyrical poems, because composed in service to the mystical purposes of the proto-Mevlevi community, and because the poemsâ recipients were seen to be receptive to the spiritual teachings of that community, neither Rumi (during whose lifetime many of these poems were composed) nor SolášĂ˘n Valad felt them to be pandering in the manner of those âprofessionalâ poets. We might recall here that the word sultan in the title SolášĂ˘n Valad (âThe Sultan Son,â by which we commonly refer to Bahââ al-Din MoḼammad Valad) suggests spiritual dominion; once we acquire the attributes of the saints (owliââ, abdâlân) we become monarchs of spirituality:
vâ rahi az bandegi solášĂ˘n ĹĄavi / bogĆśari az jesm o kolli jân ĹĄavi15
Youâll redeem yourself from servitude and become Sultan
Youâll pass beyond body and become wholly soul.
Thus, when praising even the Seljuk Sultan, SolášĂ˘n Valad is marked not only as the âsonâ (valad) of his great father, but also the heir of his grandfatherâs title and name, Sultan of Clerics, SolášĂ˘n al-âolamâ Bahââ-e Valad MoḼammad, and finally as the one who presides over the spiritual realm.16 This dominion comes through divine inspiration, made possible by the effacement of ᚢolášĂ˘n Valadâs human will and personality:
andar injâ har Äe goftam ay pesar / jomle râ elhâm-e Ḽaq dân sar-be-sar bi man âmad az man ân niku bebin / jonbeĹĄ-e ââťeq ze âeĹĄq âmad yaqin qâyel injâ âeĹĄq âmad ni Valad / dar Ḽaqiqat jomle râ bin az aḼad17
Know, my son, that whatever Iâve said in this book
it is all, cover to cover, divinely inspired
It came through me from beyond me. Look carefully!
The movement of the lover comes, in certain truth, from Love.
The speaker here is Love, not Valad
In reality, consider all this from the one true God
It has been almost universally assumed and repeated that SolášĂ˘n Valadâs poetry is derivative, more or less repeating or adumbrating the ideas of his father, but in less inspired and less inspiring (though not necessarily insipid) verse. It has even been suggested that when starting out to write the Ebtedâ-nâme, SolášĂ˘n Valad, whose profession was not poetry, had to first learn how to put a maᚥnavi together, and that it contains many weak and metrically faulty lines, but that by the second half he was becoming a stronger poet, as he became used to the verse form.18 However, it has also been remarked that the Rabâb-nâme lacks literary merit,19 which would suggest that even after composing the ten thousand-odd lines of his first maᚥnavi, he still did not have the hang of the form. This trope of the clunkiness of SolášĂ˘n Valadâs verse is overstated, mostly a product of contrastively judging him by the towering standard and reputation of his fatherâs Maᚥnavi-ye maânavi (which is also an uneven book, it might be pointed out). It is also an impression fostered by the awareness that SolášĂ˘n Valadâs poetry was preserved largely by the Mevlevi order and not widely disseminated beyond that, thus remaining peripheral to the central Persophone canon, at least outside of Anatolia.20 The frequent gestures of humility toward Mowlânâ Rumi in SolášĂ˘n Valadâs verse, positing his own verse as a means to better understand Mowlânâ, furthermore effectively efface his creative role and competence qua poet to a secondary or instrumental status as celebrant or expositor of his fatherâs teachings. As he says in the Rabâb-nâme:
bazm-e Mowlânâ-st mâ dar ášow-ye u / bâde mi-nuĹĄim az sâqi-ye hu ⌠gofte ĹĄod dar âeĹĄq-e u in maᚥnavi / tâ barad bahre ze serr-aĹĄ maânavi21
This is the banquet of Mowlânâ; famished for it,
we drink wine from the steward of divine reality âŚ
These couplets [this Maᚥnavi] was composed in love of him
that it might gain some of his mystical âtrue meaningâ [maânavi]
and once again:
in marâteb Ḽâl-e Mowlânâ-ye mâ-st / v-in maââni qâl-e Mowlânâ-ye mâ-st ânÄe kardam fahm az u goftam hamân / nist biĹĄ o kam dar in niku be-dân jân o del râ qeble ĹĄod goftâr-e u / zende-im o tâze az axbâr-e u22
These levels reveal the state of our teacher, Mowlânâ
And these meanings are the sayings of our teacher, Mowlânâ
Exactly what I understood from him, I have said
Mark this well: there is nothing more, nothing less.
His words I made the qibla of my heart and soul
His words and deeds what revive and give me life.
Moreover, the 826 ghazals in his Divân use the taxalloᚣ âValadâ with a high degree of regularity23 in the first mesrââ of the last line, a taxalloᚣ (or pen name) which has the virtue of marking the poems with a kind of family cognomen (valad is an element common to the name of Bahââ al-Din MoḼammad SolášĂ˘n Valad and his grandfather, SolášĂ˘n al-âolamâ MoḼammad Bahââ al-Din-e Valad), but more importantly points at the end of each poem to his subordinate status as the son, valad (filius) of Mowlânâ Jalâl al-Din Rumi, who is occasionally also invoked for good measure in the taxalloᚣ line as vâled (pater). SolášĂ˘n Valad thus repeatedly points to himself as both the spiritual and poetic disciple of his father, and a selection of SolášĂ˘n Valadâs poems often appear pinned on to the tail (Ćśayl) of premodern manuscripts of the Maᚥnavi-ye maânavi.24
That is generally where SolášĂ˘n Valad has remained: an afterthought trailing Rumi, of no great interest in his own right, but a treasure trove of information on the life and thought of his father, and for the early development of the Mevlevi ...