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.
2.
When Shemsu-’d-Dīn was quite worn out by a series of divine manifestations and the consequent ecstasies, he used to break away, hide himself, and work as a day-labourer at the water-wheels of the Damascus gardens, until his equanimity would be restored. Then he would return to his studies and meditations.
In his supplications to God, he was constantly inquiring whether there was not in either world, corporeal and spiritual, one other saint who could bear him company. In answer thereto, there came at length from the unseen world the answer, that the one holy man of the whole universe who could bear him company was the Lord Jelālu-’d-Dīn of Rome.
On receiving this answer, he set out at once from Damascus, and went in quest of his object to the land of Rome (Asia Minor).
3.
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.