Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, wrote 30.000 verses of lyric poetry all on the theme of love and spiritual bondage, in his venerated work, the Masnavi.

In the heart of 13th-century Konya, one day he met Shams, the enigmatic mystic from Tabriz. It was a revelation which marked the beginning of a profound spiritual journey that inspire the seekers of truth and enlightenment to this day.

Shams means sun in Arabic, and interestingly, the Sun is one of the most used subjects in Rumi’s verses.

Rumi’s eternal thirst for knowledge and truth and Shams’ mysticism is what brought these two great poets together. In Persian, we call them ashiqs, which means “spiritual lovers”. Indeed, for Rumi, Shams was shining the light of the Sun and drew out the darkness out of his heart.

This is how the “Sama” dance was created!

The Mevlevi Dance unfolds in perfect harmony with the movement of the cosmos. The Sufi path is a journey toward the fulfilment of love—toward union with the Beloved—that allows one to become an instrument for the praise of creation. Not only circular, but rather spiral, which means they revolve, grow, and expand in a way that radiates from the center out. In the spiritual world, the movements of human beings and the way they understand the process of time and space, depends on nature and parallels the cosmic order, and the basic underlying forms.