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It is said that these words were spoken a short time before Jelāl’s death. When he departed this life, not much time elapsed ere the Sultan, with many of his great men of learning and nobles, followed him to the grave, while troubles of all kinds overwhelmed the land for a season, until God again vouchsafed it peace.

During one of his expositions, Jelāl said: “Thou seest naught, save that thou seest God therein.”

A dervish came forward and raised the objection that the term “therein” indicated a receptacle, whereas it could not be predicated of God that He is comprehensible by any receptacle, as this would imply a contradiction in terms. Jelāl answered him as follows:—

“Had not that unimpeachable proposition been true, we had not proffered it. There is therein, forsooth, a contradiction in terms; but it is a contradiction in time, so that the receptacle and the recepted may differ,—may be two distinct things; even as the universe of God’s qualities is the receptacle of the universe of God’s essence. But, these two universes are really one. The first of them is not He; the second of them is not other than He. Those, apparently, two things are in truth one and the same. How, then, is a contradiction in terms implied? God comprises the exterior and the interior. If we cannot say He is the interior, He will not include the interior. But He comprises all, and in Him all things have their being. He is, then, the receptacle also, comprising all existences, as the Qur’ān (xli. 54) says: ‘He comprises all things.’”