Greetings from Constantinople. The Tournament of Dervishes
[Original] Salut de Constantinople. Derviches tourneure. [end]
The traditional music of Turkey has both pre-Turkic and Turkic influences. The roots of Turkish traditional music can be traced back to the 11th century when the Seljuk Turks (11th century-14th century) colonized Anatolia (a peninsula surrounded by the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea) and Persia.
Dervishes, or religious dancers who achieve a form of spiritual ecstasy and union with the divine during dance and music are a prominent feature of Turkish culture. The city of Konya in central Turkey is where dervish culture flowered. The Mevlevi order, founded by the poet Maulana Jalauddin Rumi in the 13th century is the best known such school. Rumi's poetry, contained in his Mathnavi, speaks of human union with the divine spirit. It is the foundation of dervish practice which seeks to attain this union through the trance of dance, music and poetry. Although whirling dervishes today are often more tourist attractions than spiritual realities, Rumi's mystical poetry remains enormously popular. By some accounts, this man born 800 years ago in Balkh, Afghanistan is even the best-selling poet in the United States.