Dance of ecstasy

A performance by the whirling dervishes of Turkey takes one on a spiritual level that is at once uplifting and humbling, says Surekha Kadapa-Bose

Dervish performers swirling at the Mevlana Museum, Turkey. Photo: Thinkstockphotos/ Getty Images

Besides experiencing the Turkish delights, Turkish bath, the wonderful spice market, the semi-precious stone jewellery and other tourists sites, what every visitor to Turkey must not miss is watch the dervishes or whirling dance performed live. Usually these performances held by private organisations start after dinner. On a visit to Istanbul, it was one such late evening when tourists from the USA, Greece and India were ushered in a 13th century caravanserai on the Kayseri-Aksaray road in Cappadocia, located in central Turkey in the Nevsehir province. The ambience, the soft, yellow light and the lilting notes of ney (flute) rose engulfing the huge stone columns of the caravanserai.

Most caravanserais have a square or rectangular walled exterior, with a single portal wide enough in the olden days to permit large or heavily laden beasts such as camels to enter. The courtyard opens to the sky with a number of identical stalls, bays, niches, or chambers, which accommodated merchants, their servants, animals and merchandise. In one of the biggest chambers was the Sema ceremony or the whirling dances held. In the olden times, caravanserais supported the flow of commerce, information and people across the network of trade routes covering Asia, North Africa, and South-East Europe.

Over the years, the dance of religious ecstasy has attracted thousands of tourists. More so, since poet Coleman Barks’ translation of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi’s works was published in the late 1970s in the US. With more than 15 volumes of translations in print, Barks has helped make Rumi one of the most popular and best-selling poets in the United States and the whirling dervish performance — a ‘must see’ on the tourist list.

It was Maulana Rumi’s son, Sultan Waalad, who organised Rumi’s disciples into a Sufi fellowship, called the Order of the Mawlawis (followers of the Maulana), popularly known as the whirling dervishes. Maulana’s magnum opus Masnavi-e M’navi (subtitled The Spiritual Couplets of Maulana Jalaluddin Muhammed Rumi in Persian.`A0Masnavi and the earlier Diwan-e Kabir (Persian for Great Volume), another masterpiece of Persian poetry, remains popular to this day. Masnavi is an epic poem of 50,000 lines, replete with metaphors not only of nature but also sex and food.

The founder of Turkish Republic Mustapha Kemal Ataturk was enamoured of Rumi’s bent of mind and particularly admired these lines: "Locks bar all gates expect your own door, / So lovers of mysteries lose their way no more." Ataturk considered Rumi a "Turkish genius" as the Maulana’s approach to God broke lose from the straitjacket of the orthodox Arab tradition. And yet the Republic had confiscated the assets of the Order of the Mawlawis and closed down their lodges in 1925, along with other Sufi orders.`A0It was only 35 years later`A0that the government allowed the Mawlawis to function as a cultural association.

The Sem`E2 ceremony represents a mystical journey of man’s spiritual ascent through love, deserting his ego, finding the truth and arriving at perfection. He returns from this spiritual journey so as to love and to be of service to all creatures without discriminating in regard to belief, class or race.

As people breathlessly waited in total silence preceding the recital, the dervish performers slowly move in — ordinary men who hold day jobs like teachers, train drivers, electricians and others. Dressed in pristine white full-sleeves short coat over ankle length tent-like skirt and the typical brownish headgear, they look awesome.

A dervish’s headdress signifies his ego’s tombstone while his white skirt, ego’s shroud. Removing his black cloak, at the onset, the dancer begins holding his arms crosswise representing number one and testifying to God’s unity. The Sem`E2 ceremony begins with a eulogy to the Prophet followed by drumbeats symbolising the divine order of the Creator, and soon the reedy tones of ney take over reminding one the divine breath. The dervishes greet each other, repeat a circular walk symbolising the salutation of soul to soul and begin twirling their bodies four times in salutation reaching a state of ecstasy.

As the dervishes gain speed — their white skirts swirling and the body blurred — the viewer, too, becomes a participant in the unbroken ecstasy or fenafillah (as known in Islam) and leading to the loss of conscious thought while the verse from the Holy Koran reaches one’s ear. At the end of the performances, tourists are offered glasses of sherbet as they are ushered out to the courtyard.