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The Galata Mevlevihanesi,
or tekke (TEHK-keh), is
a Mevlevi
Whirling Dervish hall on
Galipdede Caddesi just south of Tünel
Square, at the southern
end of Beyoglu's Istiklal
Caddesi in Istanbul
(map).
Officially, it is now used as a Museum
of Divan Literature (Divan
Edebiyat Müzesi), preserving
examples of Ottoman literary works,
inscriptions and calligraphy, but
most visitors came here in recent
years to see where the
dervishes whirled.
Unfortunately, the dervish
hall is CLOSED for restoration,
and may be for years.
You still have three opportunities to
see the dervishes whirl in
Istanbul,
however.
1. The Contemporary
Lovers of Mevlânâ Society (Evrensel
Mevlânâ Aşıkları Vakfı), a forward-looking
Mevlevi group very much in the spirit
of Rumi (Mevlânâ), performs
the sema in
the Events Hall of Sirkeci
Station (map)
every Tuesday and Saturday evening
at 19:30 (7:30 pm).
The program of
dervish music and sema lasts
about an hour. A donation is requested
to support the group, which promotes
"men and women together in worship."
This means there are female semazen (performers
of the sema) as well as
the traditional male semazen,
a logical extension of Rumi's
message of universal love and spiritual
equality.
2. You can also see a demonstration
of whirling at the Hodja
Pasha Art & Culture Center near Sirkeci
Station. More...
3. Mevlânâ
Education & Culture Group (Mevlânâ
Eğitim ve Kültür Derneği, tel
+90 (216) 336 1662) organizes
Mevlevi music concerts and the sema every
Sunday at 18:00 (6 pm) at the Muammer
Karaca Tiyatrosu (theater),
Istiklal
Caddesi, Muammer Karaca
Tiyatrosu Çikmazi No. 3. (This
little side street is at Istiklal
Caddesi 193a; map)
About the Galata Mevlevihanesi
The
Galata tekke has a long and revered
history, having been founded
in 1491 by a Ottoman grandee
from the palace of Sultan Beyazit II.
The tekke's first seyh (sheikh,
leader) was Muhammed Semaî Sultan
Divanî, a descendant of Mevlâna
Jelaleddin Rumî himself.
The building you see is not the original,
which burned in 1765, but its replacement,
which dates from 1796 and was extensively
restored during the 19th century, also
between 1967 and 1972, and again in
2008. (Another
photo.)
Galip Dede, a renowned
17th-century sheikh of this tekke,
is buried in an ornate tomb to the
left as you enter from the street.
Kumbaracıbaşı Ahmet Paşa,
better known in the west as the Claude
Alexandre, Comte de Bonneval (1675-1747),
a French nobleman who converted to Islam and
entered the sultan's service as a bombardier
general, is also buried on the tekke's
grounds.
Nearby is the tomb of Ibrahim
Müteferrika (1674-1745), an
ethnic Hungarian Unitarian from Transylvania who converted
to Islam and established
the first Arabic/Ottoman moveable-type
printing press in the Ottoman
Empire in the 1720s.
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