Although it was Muhammad Jalaluddin Rumi who inspired the whirling dance, it was his son, Sultan Veled, who organized the Mevlevi brotherhood and created the sema that we know today. Over the years Ottoman sultans became disciples of dervish sheikhs; in the seven centuries after the death of Rumi more than 100 Mevlevi tekkes, dervish lodges, were built, many by members of the ruling family.
Prior to 1925 there were five active Mevlevi tekkes in Istanbul. Today, two are standing: one in Uskudar, which is used as a mosque, and another in Galata, which has been turned into a Mevlevi museum where an occasional sema is performed. When Turkey became a republic, the Mevlevi presence diminished.
The Order moved from
Konya to Allepo in 1925, then to Damascus, and in 1929 the Mevlevi Order came
to Cairo and settled in the area at the foot of the Citadel just below the
Sultan Hassan Mosque.
The semahane which sits within this Mevlevi complex has been perfectly
restored through the combined efforts of Professor Guiseppe Fanfoni and the
Italian-Egyptian Center for Professional Training in the Field of Restoration
and Archaeology.
In 1953, the music master of the Mevlevis, approached the Konya city government with a plan to help revive the Mevlevi Order in Turkey. He proposed introducing the sema as an annual program in honor of Jalaluddin Rumi. After much debate the Konya Tourism Association accepted the idea, hoping it would draw visitors to the area. By 1956 a full sema with complete dervish costume was performed. Thus a gate was opened that brought both curious travellers and lovers of Rumi pouring into Konya. The elderly Mevlevis were filled with joy, for since the closing of the dervish lodges in 1925, they had whirled only in secret gatherings.
When the tekkes
are closed the hearts of the dervishes become tekkes. The Mevlevi dervishes
no longer walk through the doors of the three-hundred-year-old wooden tekkes
on a weekly basis and whirl barefoot on the polished wood floors of the semahane.
But the essence of today's sema is much the same as it has been for hundreds
of years.
(For a detailed description of the sema and its esoteric meaning refer
to Rumi, The Hidden Treasure by Shems Friedlander, to be published
by Fons Vitae in
May, 2001 and by Archetype in England in Spring, 2001).
The time when the Mevlevis lived in the tekke has passed. The sema revived through tourism was a transition that has led to a cultural exchange of the ideas of Mevlana. It is time to make the journey of the Self and abandon ignorance for knowledge, war for peace, and separation for brotherhood.
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Suggested Reading Chittick,
William Friedlander, Shems Lewis, Franklin Meyerovitch, Eva Ozturk, Yashar Nuri Schimmel, Annemarie |
When the tekkes are closed the hearts of the dervishes become tekkes. |
