Dervish

'Tombstone' hats remind whirling dervishes of their death

The tall light brown hats worn by whirling dervishes are as intriguing as the elliptical dance performed in honor of the Sufi poet and mystic Rumi.

In Konya, a sprawling city in central Anatolian plain where Rumi spent most of his life and died 750 years ago, one of the last workshops makes these special "sikke" hats to order.

Tanoura puts kaleidoscopic spin on dervish tradition

In a 500-year-old stone theatre in the Egyptian capital, two young dervishes spin ceaselessly. Slowly, then all at once, they are consumed in a flurry of vivid fabrics.

Born into a lineage of whirling dervishes, Mohamed Adel, 20, takes great pride in the uniquely Egyptian interpretation of the centuries-old ritual known colloquially as "tanoura," or skirt in Arabic.

Mevlana Rumi museum drew 3.4 mln visitors in 2019

A museum in central Turkey dedicated to the 13th-century Muslim mystic poet Mevlana Jalaluddin al-Rumi hosted a record of nearly 3.5 million visitors in 2019.

The Mevlana Museum, located in Konya, drew a total of 3,464,000 local and foreign tourists last year, becoming the country's number two museum destination after the Hagia Sophia Museum in Istanbul.

Dervish | Athens | October 22

Vienna-based Turkish choreographer Ziya Azazi is coming to Athens with "Dervish," which combines his two solo works, "Dervish in Progress" (2004) and "Azab" (2005), and is inspired by the teachings of Sufism and the whirling dervishes of the Mevlevi Order, one of the oldest, founded in the 13th century.

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