Samiha Ayverdi (1905-1993) was the charismatic Sufi shaykha of the Rifai Order. She was also a novelist, poet, and intellectual writer of the Turkish Conservative Right. As a part of modernizing and Westernizing reforms, the single party secular regime did not only ban the Sufi lodges in 1925, but also discarded the traditional cultural forms in music and arts in Turkey. Under these conditions, Ayverdi started to disseminate Sufi ethics in her novels and poems. She also founded several civil society associations dedicated to the preservation of the classical Turkish-Islamic heritage in literature, fine arts, music, and architecture. Her literary books and civil society associations re-opened the gates of Sufism in Turkey. Ayverdi was dedicated to preserve and revive the Classical Turkish arts, music, poetry, literature, and architecture because she believed that these traditional cultural forms embodied the ethos of tawhid (Unity of God). She promoted the Islamicate (Hodgson 1961) material culture in arts, architecture, music, and poetry not only as a means to cultivate an ennobled ethical self but also as a celebration of beauty attributed to the Jamali names of God. She perceived “aesthetics” as an indispensable mirror reflecting the discourses of tawhid, adab, and Sufi ethics. Ayverdi was a visionary guardian of the tradition as she updated, adapted and reformulated the Rifai tradition by filtering its historical Sufi precepts such as “selfless service” through the demands of the contemporary context. She reformed the Rifai tradition of “modern dervishhood” by directing her followers to serve the national community by reviving classical Turkish arts, literature, and music as Sufi practice of devotion to God. She believed that her cultural foundations were the new forms of the modern Sufi lodges (tekke). Like her late master Kenan Rifai, she did not define tekke merely as a sacred space of worship, but as the hearths of knowledge (irfan) in the service of the community.