Turkey / Ottoman Empire: Dance of the Dervishes, Ottoman Greece or Turkey, Edward Dodwell, 1821

Edward Dodwell (1767 – 13 May 1832) was an Irish painter, traveller and a writer on archaeology.

Dodwell travelled from 1801 to 1806 in Greece (at the time a part of the Ottoman Empire), and spent the rest of his life for the most part in Italy, at Naples, and Rome.

A Dervish (from Persian درویش, Darvīsh via Turkish, Somali: Daraawiish, Arabic: دولة الدراويش‎) is someone treading a Sufi Muslim ascetic path or 'Tariqah', known (notionally) for their extreme poverty and austerity, similar to mendicant friars in Christianity or Hindu/Buddhist/Jain sadhus.

The whirling dance or Sufi whirling that is proverbially associated with Dervishes is best known in the West by the practices of the Mevlevi order in Turkey, and is part of a formal ceremony known as the Sama. It is, however, also practiced by other orders. The Sama is only one of the many Sufi ceremonies performed to try to reach religious ecstasy (majdhb, fana).

The name Mevlevi comes from the Persian poet, Rumi who was a Dervish himself.

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