On Mevlevi Organization

Abstract

J .Spencer Trimingham, in his groundbreaking survey of Sufi orders in Islam, proposed the history of Sufi orders was closely bound up with social history in general, leading through four distinct stages. In this article, I apply Trimingham’s scheme to the Mevlevi order to demonstrate how it developed from the individual piety of its founder to a distinct form of devotion in the second stage, and to a full- fledged hierarchical organization which Trimingham put at the fifteenth century. At this point the early bifurcation had ended with the dominance of the urban branches, and the symbiosis with the House of Osman was manifest in organizational structure and endowments. Finally, Sufi orders went through a period of reform in the nine- teenth century, in which the Mevlevi’s close association with the state was crucial.