Whirling Dervishes Ceremony in a Historic Medrese with Audio Guide App

The historic medrese

The ceremony is held in a small Ottoman medrese, a religious college built in the classical style with a stone courtyard surrounded by domed cells and a larger domed hall, standing in the lanes of the Old City a few minutes' walk from Sultanahmet Square, Hagia Sophia and the Sultanahmet stop of the T1 tram. Medreses like this once taught Quran, law and the sciences; this one has been restored as a venue for traditional culture, and the whirling takes place under its dome with the audience seated around the floor.

The hall is intimate, which is the point: you are close enough to hear the dervishes' robes move and see their expressions. The exact address and a map link come with your confirmation, and you should be at the hall 15 minutes before the 19:00 start, as doors close when the ceremony begins.

The Mevlevi order and the meaning of the Sema

The Mevlevi order grew in Konya in the 13th century around the teachings of a Sufi poet and scholar whose followers took his title, Mevlana, as their name. For them the turning of the Sema is a form of remembrance of God: the dervish turns from right to left around the heart, the right palm open to the sky to receive and the left turned to the earth to give, in harmony with the turning of everything in creation, from the planets to the blood in the body.

The audio guide explains the symbols you see. The tall camel-hair hat stands for the tombstone of the ego, the black cloak for the grave and worldly life, and the white robe beneath it for the shroud; casting off the cloak at the start of the turning marks the beginning of the spiritual journey. The ceremony was inscribed by UNESCO in 2008 as intangible heritage of humanity.

The stages of the ceremony

The Sema follows a fixed order that the audio guide walks you through. It opens with a sung eulogy of the Prophet, followed by a drum beat symbolising the divine command and an improvisation on the ney, the reed flute whose breathy sound stands for the soul longing for its origin. The dervishes then make three slow circuits of the hall, the Sultan Veled walk, bowing to each other as they pass the sheepskin of the sheikh. Only then do they cast off their black cloaks and begin to turn.

The turning itself is divided into four selams, four musical sections representing the stages of the spiritual path, each ending with the dervishes stopping and bowing. The sheikh enters the turning in the last section, and the ceremony closes with a recitation from the Quran and a prayer. The whole evening lasts about an hour.

Visiting practicalities and the Old City around it

This is a religious ceremony, so the hall asks for silence, no applause until the very end, no walking about and no flash; follow the staff's instructions on photography. Dress is casual but modest. Bring headphones and a charged smartphone for the audio guide app, which you can download on the hotel Wi-Fi and listen to before the ceremony begins. Children from 6 are welcome if they can sit quietly; younger children count as infants, so ask us before booking.

At 19:00 the ceremony fits neatly between an afternoon in Sultanahmet and dinner. The lanes around the medrese lead in minutes to Hagia Sophia, the Basilica Cistern and the restaurants of Sultanahmet and Sirkeci, and the T1 tram at Sultanahmet runs until late for the trip back to Karaköy, Kabataş or Taksim.