After Rumi

A preeminent scholar of Islamic history chronicles the rise of the Mevlevis, the influential Sufi community founded by Rumi. The thirteenth-century Persian poet and scholar Rumi is revered to this day. However, less attention has been paid to the Sufi community he founded: the Mevlevis, sometimes called the “Whirling Dervishes.” Centered on the descendants of Rumi and the disciples of his thought, the Mevlevis flourished in Anatolia during a period of extraordinary political, religious, and linguistic change. By the seventeenth century, they had become the recognizable bearers of Rumi’s tradition across the Ottoman world. Jamal J. Elias argues that the Mevlevis are best understood as a community rooted in kinship and emotional affinity, anchored by multiple generations of partnership between Rumi’s descendants, known as Chelebis, and scholars devoted to his works. These collaborations shaped the religious, artistic, and social priorities of the Mevlevis, while also establishing the status of both Rumi and the Persian language in Ottoman society. As Turkish became the dominant literary and administrative language in the Ottoman world, Persian literacy faltered despite continued reverence for canonical Persian texts. Over time, the Mevlevis became the most important authorities on Rumi’s works—especially his multivolume epic poem called the Masnavi, which gradually assumed a significant quasi-scriptural status. A revelatory account of religious formation, After Rumi illuminates the affective dimensions of spiritual life and the dynamics of cultural exchange in the premodern eastern Mediterranean.