Celebrating Mevlana Jalaladdin Rumi in picture and verse
Each year, thousands of people travel to the Turkish city of Konya to attend a weeklong series of events and ceremonies that mark the death of the 13th-century Islamic poet, scholar and Sufi mystic Jalaladdin Rumi.
The rite begins with a recital of prayers and verses from the Quran. The dervishes, dressed in long white robes symbolising shrouds, black cloaks symbolising tombs and long headgear symbolising tombstones, then rise from the ground to salute each other. As they whirl, the dervishes' right hands are symbolically turned upward toward God, while their left hands are turned downward to Earth.
Although religious orders were banned in Turkey in the early 1920s with the establishment of the secular republic, the dervishes’ rituals were regarded as a cultural heritage and the order was largely tolerated. There are now many Sufi dervish orders around the world, including in the United States. Women have been allowed to join some lodges, although an overwhelming number of dervishes are men.
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