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      You can witness the sema in Istanbul's splendid Alemdar Restaurant on a Whirling Dervishes Night Tour. A somewhat shorter version is performed every day located only 100 m from Hagia Sophia Museum on the Main Tramway road. The Mevlevi sema, or dervish mystic religious rite, is an elaboration of the whirling done by Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi in ecstasy on the streets of Konya, Turkey in the 13th century.



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This place has a very good atmosphere with Whirling Dervishes dance & Sufi music .
Whirling Dervishes ceremonies start at 20:00 in winter and 21:00 in summer everynight. The whole ceremony takes around one hour and we offer 'Serbet', a religious drink, after the ceremony. For Group Tours We can pick you up from your hotels .

Whirling dervishes ceremony
Sema (Whirling dervishes ceremony), is the inspiration of Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi (1207 - 1273) as well as part of the Turkish culture, belief and history in Konya. It symbolizes the different meanings of a mystic cycle to perfection (Ascension - Mirac).

Contemporary science definitely confirms that the fundamental condition of our existence is to revolve. There is no object, no being which does not revolve. Every thing whirls and man, a whirling dervish, carries on his life, his very existence by means of the revolution in the atoms, structural elements in his body, by the circulation of his blood, by his coming from the Earth and return to it, by his revolving with the Earth itself.

The Sema (whirling dervishes) ceremony represents all a mystical journey of man's spiritual ascent through love, finding the truth and arriving to the "Perfect". Then he returns from this spiritual journeys as a man who reached maturity and a greater perfection, so as to love and to be of service to the whole creation, to all creatures without discriminating in regard to belief, class, or race.

The dervish with his hat (his ego's tombstone), and his white skirt (his ego's shroud) is spiritually born to the truth. When he removes his black cloak, he journeys and advances to the spiritual maturity through the stages of the Sema. At the beginning and each stage of the Sema holding his arms crosswise he represents number one, and testifies to God's unity.

While whirling his arms are open, his right hand directed to the sky ready to receive God's beneficence, gazing his left hand turned toward the earth for giving what he received to poor, he turns from right to left, pivoting around the heart. This is his way of conveying God's spiritual gift to the people upon whom God "looks with a Divine" watchfulness. Revolving around the heart, from right to left, he embraces all of humankind, all the creation with affection and love.

"Come, come, whoever you are,
Wanderer, idolater, worshiper of fire,
Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times,
Come, and come yet again.
Ours is not a caravan of despair"


Licence No: A-5843
Turkey Packages, Turkey Tours, Istanbul Tours
Alemdar Cad. No:3/B Sultanahmet, Istanbul / TURKEY
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