Reflections of Quranic Interpretations of Masnavi-i Manavi in Sultan Walad's Masnavies

Masnavi-i Manavi is an impressive work in the realm of Islamic mysticism, where Molavi using his Quranic discourse, provides disciples with many teachings. He also has certain opinions regarding Quranic interpretations and by means of his mystic intuition, he tried to explicate different semantic aspects of Quranic ayahs. The first person who imitating Molana wrote another Masnavi was his son Sultan Walad who enjoyed the teachings of Masnavi-i Manavi. Although he found a new way of experience in mysticism, his cognition and logic are very much affected by Mevlevi Order especially his fathers. Pondering on his three Masnavies reveals that many Quranic interpretations available in Molana’s Masnavi have been reflected in his work. In the present article, the authors try to examine the viewpoints of Molana with regard to Quranic interpretation and meanings and weigh how much they influenced Sultan Walad's Masnavies.
The results points to the fact that Molana and his follower, Sultan Walad, consider their writings as Quranic interpretation and believe that the words of Allah's fāni spiritual men are illuminating for human beings as are the Quran's divine revelations. As a result, the Quran's interpreters are those who have really reached Allah not the servants of their desires. In their viewpoints, the Quran has different layers of meaning and merely relying on the surface layer does not befit Allah's spiritual men at all. Molana believes that Allah's wvasel (joined) men can only understand up to the third layer of the Quran, but Sultan Walad believes that spiritual men understand up to the third layer and understanding a layer beyond that is only in the monopoly of Allah's true lovers.