Local and foreign tourists gather in Turkey’s central province to mark the 745th death anniversary of Jalaluddin al-Rumi - a 13th century Sufi mystic, poet and Islamic scholar.
Events to commemorate the anniversary of Rumi’s passing, known as “Sheb-i Arus" (the night of union), started in the central Anatolian province of Konya, where he is buried.
Whirling dervishes always perform during a ceremony marking the anniversary of the death of Jelaleddin Mevlana Rumi.
The dervishes is an adapted form of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam that preaches tolerance and a search for understanding.
Those who whirl, like planets around the sun, turn dance into a form of prayer. Some say the whirling dervishes belong more to the central, conservative city of Konya, where the father of Sufism, Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, lived in the 13th century, than to the cosmopolitan modern city.
