The dervish cells
1584
Along the north side of the courtyard, under a row of small lead covered domes and a wooden portico, run the cells in which the dervishes lived. There are seventeen of them, each a single vaulted room with a fireplace, a niche for a lamp and a window onto the court, and they were built in 1584 in the reign of Sultan Murad the Third, whose mother had strong ties to the order. A few are furnished as they might have looked in the last century of the lodge, with rugs, cushions, a low bookstand and a life size figure of a dervish reading or receiving a guest; the rest serve as small exhibition rooms.
The cells tell you something the grand halls do not. The Mevlevi way was not only music and poetry but a long discipline of ordinary life. A new dervish spent a thousand and one days in training, serving in the kitchen before he was given a cell of his own, and here he would pray, study, copy manuscripts and practise the reed flute. Notice the calligraphic panels above the doors and the fireplaces with their conical hoods, and the way the whole row looks onto the garden, which was where the men gathered in fine weather.
The displayed objects in the cells change, but they usually include dervish clothing such as the tall honey coloured felt hat called a sikke and the wide white skirt worn for the sema, rosaries, begging bowls carved from coconut and sea shell, and the wooden axes and staffs carried by wandering dervishes. The cells were the last part of the lodge to be lived in; after the closure in 1925 they housed the museum's first offices, and their careful restoration is one reason the courtyard feels like a working community rather than a ruin.
Did You Know? A newcomer to the lodge served a thousand and one days in the kitchen and courtyard before earning the right to a cell of his own.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.