Sultan Walad

Baha al-Din Muhammad-i Walad (, 1227-1312), better known as Sultan Walad , was a Sufi and scholar. The eldest son of Rumi, he became one of the founders of the Mevlevi Order.

Life and impact

Sultan Walad was born around 1227 to Rumi and his wife Gawhar Khatun, daughter of the Lala Sharaf-ud-Din of Samarkand.

He was given the name of his grandfather Baha al-Din Walad. Jalal al-Din Rumi sent Sultan Walad and his brother Ala al-Din Muhammad to Aleppo and Damascus for Islamic studies. Sultan Walad was sent by Rumi to seek Shams Tabrizi, who had disappeared.

Sultan Walad married the daughter of Salah al-Din Zarkub, Fatima Khatun.

Ibtida Nama (The book of the beginning)

The first Persian poetic verse book of Sultan Walad, in the style Mathnawi (a type of Persian verse) is the Ibtidā-nāma (The book of the beginning), also called Walad-nāma (The book of Walad) or Mat̲h̲nawī-yi Waladī.

Ma’arif-i Waladi (The Waladi Gnosis)

Also called al-Asrār al-d̲j̲alāliyya. Thus Sultan Valad composed approximately 300 verses in Greek and Turkish.

Sultan Walad admits to his poor knowledge of Greek and Turkish.

For example, in his Ebteda-Nama, Sultan Walad admits twice in Persian after some of the lines in Greek/Turkish:

بگذر از گفت ترکی و رومی

که از این اصطلاح محرومی

گوی از پارسی و تازی

که در این دو همی خوش تازی

Translation:

Let go of the languages of Greek (Rumi) and Turkish (Turki)

Because you lack knowledge in these two,

Thus speak in Persian and Arabic,

Since in these two, you recite very well.

And also elsewhere in Ghazal in his Diwan, he writes: If I knew Turkish, I would have brought one to a thousand. But when you listen to Persian, I tell the secrets much better.

He also says: If I had known Turkish, I would have told you, the secrets that God had imparted on Me.

According to Mehmed Fuad Köprülü, the Turkish poems are: Written in a very crude and primitive manner and with a very defective and rudimentary versification replete with zihaf (pronouncing long vowels short) and imalā (pronouncing a short vowel long). Also according to Mehmed Fuad Koprulu: Sultan Walad’s motivation in writing Turkish poetry, just as it was with composing and reciting Persian poetry, was to raise the religious consciousness of the people of Anatolia, to guide them and instill in them a sense of the greatness of Mawlana and The fact he occasionally resorted to Turkish derives from his fear that a large majority who did not undesrand Persian, would be deprived of these teaching.

Also the Greek verses gives us one of the earliest specimen of Islamic poetry in the Greek languages, and some of the earliest extensive attestation of Cappadocian Greek.

Legacy Sultan Walad was instrumental in laying down the Mawlawiya order and expanding the teaching of his father throughout Anatolia and the rest of the Muslim world. Annemarie Schimmel stated:

In Popular Culture In the 2023 biographical series Mevlana Celâleddin-i Rumi, the role of Sultan Walad is portrayed by actor Yusuf Çim.