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Mevlevi Tekke (Museum of Whirling Dervishes) |
| Nicosia - North Cyprus |
The small museum is within the walls of the city and close to the
Kyrenia gate. It is on the main street leading to Ataturk square and can
be distinguished by six domes surmounting a rectangular building. Since
its construction in the early 17th century i t is known as the Mevlevi
Tekke, where a Moslem religious sect used to hold ceremonial dances
under the command of a sheikh. These regular functions went on for
several hundred years and finally ceased in 1930 but the dance floor is
still preserved. In g lass cases are the costumes worn by the dancers
and their musical instruments. The dervishes who danced were the Islamic
equivalent of Christian friars and their gyrations were often described
in old guide books on Cyprus. Other exhibits in the museum are
manuscript books of the Koran and handwritten court records dating back
to l590. Also on view are Turkish Cypriot dresses and cooking utensils
from peasants' houses - in a sense it is really a folk museum.
A corridor leads to the tombs of five successive sheikhs who were the
dance leaders since the I7th century. Each tomb has the stone figure of
the camel hair hat which was their badge of office. The museum is not a
mosque, so it is strange that one should be buried in one's place of
work.
Outside, in the courtyard, are many marble tombstones of the Ottoman
empire period and fragments of columns from Roman buildings. Old guide
books mention that there was once a large marble sarcophagus of a
Venetian governor, Augusto Canali, who died in 153 l, but it now seems
to have disappeared. The visitor will notice that there are very few
here, as elsewhere in the island, remains of the Venetian occupation,
apart from the massive walls and castles they built in Famagusta and
Kyrenia. However, their period of occupation was short, less than a
hundred years, - from I489 to 1571. |
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