Galata Mevlevi Lodge: The Whirling Dervishes
Why is it significant?
Step through the gate and the steep, noisy street is gone. In front of you lies a quiet garden of gravestones, many of them topped with tall stone hats shaped like a felt cap. That cap, the sikke, is the sign of the Mevlevi dervishes, and this was their home in Galata.
Key Facts
| Place | Galata Mevlevi Lodge: The Whirling Dervishes |
|---|---|
| Address | Şahkulu, Galip Dede Caddesi No:15, 34421 Beyoğlu/İstanbul, Türkiye |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.02800, 28.97510 |
| Part of Walk | Across the Golden Horn: Hidden Galata and Pera, Istanbul |
| Generated | Generated |
Step through the gate and the steep, noisy street is gone. In front of you lies a quiet garden of gravestones, many of them topped with tall stone hats shaped like a felt cap. That cap, the sikke, is the sign of the Mevlevi dervishes, and this was their home in Galata.
The Galata Mevlevihanesi was founded in 1491, the first Mevlevi lodge in İstanbul. The order follows the teaching of Celaleddin Rumi, the thirteenth-century poet of Konya, and its prayer is the sema, the turning ceremony that the West calls whirling. The dervish turns with the right palm open to the sky and the left palm turned down to the earth: receiving from above, passing it on below.
Go into the semahane, the octagonal wooden hall, rebuilt in the late eighteenth century. Musicians sat in the gallery with reed flutes and drums, and the dervishes turned on the polished floor beneath. Sultan Selim III, himself a composer, was close to the order. In the lodge lies the poet Şeyh Galip, sheikh of this lodge, who died in 1799, and whose long poem Beauty and Love is a classic of Ottoman literature. The steep street outside, Galip Dede, carries his name.
Now look among the graves for a stone with a strange story. Here lies Humbaracı Ahmed Pasha, born in France as Claude Alexandre, Count de Bonneval. He was a general who quarrelled with half the courts of Europe, came to the Ottomans, converted to Islam, and reorganised the sultan's corps of bombardiers. He died in 1747, a French count in a dervish cemetery.
In 1925 the young Republic closed all the dervish lodges, and the music stopped here for decades. The building reopened as a museum, and the sema itself is now recognised by UNESCO as part of the cultural heritage of humanity. When you are ready, climb the last part of Galip Dede to the top, where the street opens onto a small square, a red tram, and a hole in the ground that has been carrying people up this hill since 1875.