I registered for a Sunday evening sufi performance expecting whirling dervishes like the ones I had seen on a trip to Turkey.

Konya is also known as the home of the Mevlevi order, the Sufi sect that follows the teachings of Rumi, often called whirling dervishes, due to their distinctive spinning prayer known as Sema.

Historian William Dalrymple journeys to Morocco, Turkey, Syria and Pakistan to explore whirling dervishes, Qawwali singing and other forms of music sacred in Sufism, the branch of Islam that ...