Dervishes

Fahrelnissa Zeid, the aristocratic Turkish pioneer artist who later married into the Jordanian Hashemite Royal Family, the wife of King Hussein's great-uncle Prince El-Hussein, has a singular place in the history of Turkish modern art. As a female artist living in Paris in the 1940s, she was one of the so-called Ecole de Paris artists. Underlying much of her work is the influence of Turkish miniatures or tile mosaics, blended with her experience of Fauvism and abstraction. She painted in various styles, figurative and abstract, but in each her work is characterized by a use of bold colour and broad brushstrokes. The dynamism of this painting reflects the life of the artist who painted various styles, even though in its subject matter it clearly distances itself to the rest of her work.

The whirling dance is a Sufi tradition part of the Sema ceremony performed at Dhikr, the ceremony is taking part in the Semahane or dance room. Those rituals come from the north of Syria. The goal of this ceremony is to reach Majbhd (Sacred Ecstasy). The Dhikr (Remembrance of God) includes payers, instrumental music and the wearing of the symbolic attire as shown in this work.
Fahrelnissa's painting depicts the repetitive spinning movements, driving to religious ecstasy; she also represents the dervishes' traditional clothing such as the white whirling skirt, representing the mourning, the jacket, the belt and the distinctive tall hat, which represent Ottoman gravestones.
The dervishes turn the palms of their right hands palm towards the sky and the palms of their left hands towards the ground.