“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”

— Rumi —

Turkey has been the melting pot of history and culture on one side and revolution and spirituality on the other. Straddling between the two continents of Asia and Europe, Turkiye has forever been a mix of different cultures and ethnicities!

Around the 13th century, a spiritual movement was brewing in the  distant city of  Konya in Turkey that took the entire Middle East by storm and later spread to other Islamic countries as well.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad was born in 1207 to a family of theological scholars. In 1228 his family settled in Konya, a city in the Anatolian region of present-day Turkiye, where he met and became a student of the great scholar and Sufi, Burhaneddin al-Tirmithi, and devoted his life to his service. Later, Jalāl ad-Dīn got the name, ‘Rumi’, meaning ‘Anatolian’ as he hailed from that region. He was also given the title ‘Mevlâna’ by his followers, which means ‘Our Master’.

For nine years, Rumi practised Sufism as a disciple of Burhan ud-Din until the latter expired, thus making way for Rumi's public life—he became an Islamic Jurist, and gave sermons in the mosques of Konya. He also served as an Islamic teacher and taught his students in the madrassa.

Around this time, Rumi met the great Persian poet, Shams-e Tabrizi, who changed his life forever. Such was the influence of the poet on the young Rumi that from an accomplished teacher and jurist, he was transformed into a mystic.

In his pursuit of the Almighty, Rumi soon realized that in order to reach God the only way forward was through music, poetry and dance. Rumi believed that music would help devotees to focus their mind, body and soul on the ‘Divine’ and in order to do so with deep intensity, the concept of the ‘Whirling Dervishes’ was developed by him into a ritual form. 

This sacred dance form represents a mystical journey of spiritual ascent by the devotee towards attainment of the ‘Only One’! In this journey, the seeker grows through love, abandons the ego, finds the truth and goes closer to God. He then returns from this spiritual ecstasy with greater maturity to love and be of service to the whole of God’s creation without discriminating between any race, class, belief or faith.

On December 17, 1273, the great Turkish ascetic, Rumi, departed for his heavenly abode and left behind a legacy of spiritual and philosophical teachings that became the basis for the Mevlevi Order that was founded by his son, Sultan Walad.  

Gurju Khatun, the queen of Seljuk, in Turkiye, sponsored the erection of Rumi’s tomb in Konya. This 13th century Mevlâna Mausoleum, with its mosque, dance hall, madrassa, and living quarters for dervishes, remains a destination for pilgrims to this day, and is probably the most popular pilgrimage site to be regularly visited by followers of all religions.