Al-Mawlaweya Al-Masreya

The Mevlevis are a sufi order created in Konya (Turkey) in the 13th century by the followers of the great Persian poet and theologian Jalal ad-Din Rumi. Rumi, as is commonly known in the English-speaking world, left us many poems and treatises that have been translated in many languages (collection of poems are easily available in Diwan or Kotob Khan bookshops in Cairo) and that have established him as one of the most widely-read poet in the world.
But for our immediate interests, it is his son and followers that concern us, because they are the ones who divined the dance, chant and music ceremony called sema as a rite to get closer to God. And it is through that ceremony that the so-called Whirling Dervishes has become known to the world at large.
Typically, at a sema, a group of dervishes, accompanied by music performed on traditional instruments like the nay and the rabab, and by chants celebrating God and the Prophet, start turning around themselves, first slowly then more rapidly, until they reach a state of trance.

The Mawlaweya Al-Masreya is derived from the Turkish version but substantially different in its way of looking at the spiritual side of the ceremony (do not worry, I am not going to dwell into that), in the fact that it accepts women, and in its more modernist approach to the music, incorporating instrument such as the violin and the guitar. The most famous troupe of the Al-Mawlaweya Al-Masreya is the one led by what I believe is the initiator of the movement, Amer El-Toni, who founded his troupe in 1994 in Greece while studying music there.

Internationally recognized, the El-Toni Troupe will be performing Tuesday, September 16 at 9:00 PM in the gardens of the Cervantes Institute in Dokki.