His two sons

Yes — that is a very legitimate and fruitful way to look at it, and it stays much closer to what the sources can support.

If we set aside the twin question entirely and treat Sultan Veled and Muhammad ʿAla al-Din simply as two sons of Rumi, then their different responses to Shams become one of the most interesting human dramas in early Sufi history.

Let’s look at this carefully, without genetics, and without hagiographic exaggeration.

1. The historical core: two sons, one disruptive figure

What is well attested across sources:

• Shams arrives and radically transforms Rumi

• Rumi withdraws from his former public role

• Family, students, and disciples are deeply unsettled

• Shams becomes the focal point of tension

Within that context:

• Sultan Veled gradually accepts Shams

• ʿAla al-Din appears to resist him

This alone does not require twins, genetics, or speculation — it is a classic family dynamic under spiritual upheaval.

2. Sultan Veled: the adaptive son

Sultan Veled’s response can be described as adaptive integration.

Key traits seen in sources:

• He does not initially embrace Shams enthusiastically

• But he learns to mediate

• He remains emotionally close to his father

• He later becomes the bridge between:

  
  

  • Rumi’s ecstatic inward transformation

  • The outward institutional world

• 
  

In modern terms:

Sultan Veled adapts to change by finding meaning and structure within it.

This is not passive obedience — it’s interpretive loyalty.

3. ʿAla al-Din: the threatened son

ʿAla al-Din’s reaction can be read as protective resistance, not moral failure.

Plausible pressures on him:

• Loss of access to his father

• Public humiliation of established scholars

• A stranger replacing familiar bonds

• Collapse of predictable social order

His resistance makes psychological sense:

Shams doesn’t just challenge Rumi — he destabilizes the entire family system.

From this perspective, ʿAla al-Din’s stance is human, not villainous.

4. This is not “good son vs bad son”

Later Mevlevi tradition tends to flatten this into:

• Sultan Veled = enlightened heir

• ʿAla al-Din = spiritually blind obstacle

But historically:

• That framing serves institutional legitimacy

• Sultan Veled becomes founder → his narrative is preserved

• ʿAla al-Din does not → his voice disappears

This asymmetry shapes how we remember them.

5. A deeper comparison: orientation toward

absence

Here’s a more subtle distinction that doesn’t rely on psychology jargon:

Sultan Veled

• Accepts absence (Shams’s disappearance)

• Transforms loss into transmission

• Writes, teaches, organizes

• Keeps the fire contained

ʿAla al-Din

• Cannot accept the rupture

• Experiences absence as injustice

• Remains emotionally attached to the pre-Shams Rumi

• Rejects the fire that consumes form

This is not about intelligence or virtue — it’s about tolerance for radical transformation.

6. Rumi’s own poetry hints at this dynamic

Rumi repeatedly writes about:

• Children who cannot recognize the new wine

• Sons who inherit the form but not the intoxication

• Lovers who cling to the lamp after the sun has risen

These are not autobiographical confessions — but they reflect lived tensions.

7. Why this comparison matters

Seen this way:

• Sultan Veled preserves Rumi’s legacy

• ʿAla al-Din preserves Rumi’s human cost

Both roles are real.

Without resistance, transformation becomes fantasy.

Without adaptation, it becomes destruction.

Conclusion

Yes — setting aside twins entirely gives us a cleaner, more historically grounded comparison:

• Two sons

• One father radically transformed

• One adapts and mediates

• One resists and grieves

That difference does not require biology to be meaningful.

If you’d like, next we could:

• Read specific Aflākī passages with this lens

• Compare this dynamic to other Sufi father–disciple ruptures

• Or explore how Sultan Veled’s writings subtly respond to his brother’s absence

Just tell me where you’d like to go next.