Soltân Valad and the poetical order: framing the ethos and praxis of poetry in the Mevlevi tradition after Rumi

Bahâ’ al-Din Mohammad-e Valad, better known as Soltân Valad (623-712 ah/1226-1312 ce), son of the famous Mowlânâ Jalâl al-Din Rumi, played a critical role in expounding his father’s 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 Rumi’s death. Soltân Valad was the author of a set of discourses, called a Ma’âref (a compilation of talks or statements, perhaps taken down in note form by disciples during his classes or lectures, like the Ma’âref of both Borhân al-Din Mohaqqeq and Bahâ’ al-Din-e Valad, as well as Rumi’s Fihe mâ fih and Šams al-Din Tabrizi’s Maqâlât);2 like his father, he composed a Divân, which in the edition of Asġar Rabbâni (Hâmed) contains about 13,000 lines, comprising 826 Persian ghazals, 8 Arabic ghazals, and 1 macaronic Persian-Arabic molamma‛, 15 Turkish ghazals, 32 qasidas, 9 qet‛es, 23 mosammats, and 454 robâ‛is.3 Furthermore, again like his father, he composed a trilogy of masnavis, namely, the Ebtedâ-nâme (also known as the Valad-nâme, or Masnavi-ye Valadi) of approximately 10,000 lines, the Rabâb-nâme (ca. 8,000 lines), and the Entehânâme (ca. 7,000 lines).4 While the Divân of Soltân Valad is perhaps less than half the size of his father’s Divân,5 if we tally the three masnavis of Soltân Valad, taken cumulatively they will roughly match in length the renowned Masnavi-ye ma‛navi of his father.6