Turkiye’s whirling dancers celebrate Rumi’s tolerance
Dervishes perform during a ceremony honouring Rumi, in Konya, Turkiye on Saturday.
The skirts of whirling dervishes twirl in a symphony of disco colours celebrating mystic Sufi poet Rumi at a cultural centre in central Turkiye’s Konya.
Every year, the Seb-i Arus (Wedding Night) festival honouring Rumi’s death on December 17, 1273, draws so many people that traditional venues are not large enough to contain the crowds. Pilgrims, tourists and meditation enthusiasts flock to this vast Anatolian city, where Rumi — or Mevlana as he is known in Turkiye — spent most of his life after being driven out of modernday Afghanistan by Mongol invaders. His writings have gradually spread well beyond central Asia and won acclaim in the West. Pop legend Madonna adapted one of Rumi’s poems and Beyonce named her daughter after him.
Ironically, the most famous master of Sufism — who taught tolerance with the words “come, come, whoever you are, wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving” — is honoured in a city with one of Turkiye’s most staunchly conservative Sunni traditions. “Rumi’s works have been translated into almost every language, and in the United States alone more than 250 books are dedicated to him,” said Nuri Simsekler, a specialist in Persian literature at Konya’s Selcuk University. “Rumi speaks to all humans, telling us about ourselves,” Mr. Simsekler said of Rumi’s enduring popularity seven centuries after his death.
The sema rituals are performed by whirling dervishes who don a tall light brown hat, with their arms elegantly spread. The order was established after Rumi’s death by his son and descendants. To the sounds of reed flutes and tambourines, the dervish takes off his long black cloak to dance, but keeps his cylindrical felt hat on. The “sikke” represents the tombstone which will one day stand at the head of his grave.