"Dancing Dervishes", Folio from the Shah Jahan Album
Mir 'Ali Haravi
recto: ca. 1610; verso: ca. 1530–50 · Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper · Islamic Art
Ecstatic dervishes in this painting perform the sama, or mystical whirling dance. Although this dance was practiced as a means of achieving mystical states from very early times in the Islamic world, it was institutionalized at the end of the thirteenth century by Sultan Walad, son of the great mystical poet Jalaluddin Rumi, who died at Konya (present-day Turkey) in 1273.
- Artist
- Mir 'Ali Haravi
- Date
- recto: ca. 1610; verso: ca. 1530–50
- Medium
- Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper
- Department
- Islamic Art
- Credit line
- Purchase, Rogers Fund and The Kevorkian Foundation Gift, 1955
