Mevlevi Brotherhood

A Sufi order.

The Mevlevi Brotherhood is a style of Anatolian Sufism founded by Mevlana Celalledina (also Jalal al-Din) Rumi (1207 - 1273), a Central Asian mystic and poet. He developed the samaʿa, a rite of communal recitation, which consists of a call to Allah, performance of the zikr (the divine ceremony of remembrance that signifies an attempt to connect and give thanks for the primordial moment of creation), - dancing, and meditating. The sama'a evokes a dialogue with nature; members methodically join in an individual, synchronized, whirling dance that emulates the movement of the planets on their journey of spiritual fulfillment. Rumi's son and grandson developed the order into a community of followers, which flourished during the Ottoman era.

The Mevlevis played an important role in Turkey's social and intellectual development, and the order served as a conduit for the common people. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his secular colleagues who established the Republic of Turkey distrusted the Mevelvis on account of their influence among the masses and forcibly disbanded the order in 1925. The Mevlevi monastery in Konya was converted into a museum in 1927 and the members were banned from using it. Even though the monastery remains a museum, it serves de facto as a shrine that thousands of pilgrims visit each year. Despite its suppression in Turkey, the Mevlevis spread to other countries and today their centers exist in more than seventy-five cities worldwide.

Bibliography

Friedlander, Shems. Rumi and the Whirling Dervishes: Being anAccount of the Sufi Order Known as the Mevlevis and Its Founder the Poet and Mystic. New York: Parabola Books, 2003.

"The Whirling Dervishes." The Rumi Society. Available from http://www.rumisociety.org/WhirlingDervishes.html.

— TAYEB EL-HIBRI
UPDATED BY RITA STEPHAN