Mawlawīyah

Mawlawīyah, fraternity of Sufis (Muslim mystics) founded in Konya (Qonya), Anatolia, by the Persian Sufi poet Rūmī (d. 1273), whose popular title mawlānā (Arabic: “our master”) gave the order its name. The order, propagated throughout Anatolia, controlled Konya and environs by the 15th century and in the 17th century appeared in Constantinople (Istanbul). European travelers identified the Mawlawīyah as dancing (or whirling) dervishes, based on their observations of the order’s ritual prayer (dhikr), performed spinning on the right foot to the accompaniment of musical instruments.

After the dissolution of all Sufi brotherhoods in Turkey by a decree of September 1925, the Mawlawīyah survived in a few monasteries in Aleppo, Syria, and a scattering of small towns in the Middle East. Special permission granted by the Turkish government in 1954 allowed the Mawlawī dervishes of Konya to perform their ritual dances for tourists during two weeks of every year. Despite government opposition the order continued to exist in Turkey as a religious body into the early 21st century. Rūmī’s tomb at Konya, officially a museum, attracted a steady stream of devotees.