Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier / A Record of Sixteen Years' Close Intercourse with the Natives of the Indian Marches

by T. L. Pennell

Except in a few cases in India, none of these orders of faqirs or dervishes adopt the ochre garments of the Sadhus. The most characteristic garment of the faqir is known as the dilaq, which is a patchwork, particoloured cloak. The owner goes on adding patches of pieces of coloured cloth which take his fancy, but I have never seen him washing it, and as it gets old he stitches and patches it till very little of the original is left. The older and more patched it is, the greater is the pride he takes in it, and he would not part with it for love or money.

The order which is most commonly seen in Afghanistan is that known as Malang, or wandering dervish. These men have a dilaq, a staff, and a begging-bowl, and travel all about the country begging. They are nearly all illiterate, and their knowledge of their own religion does not usually extend beyond certain chapters from the Quran and stock formulæ. But they have a wonderful vocabulary of words of abuse and curses, and the people are in great fear of being visited by some calamity if they offend one of them and incur his wrath, as they believe in their being able to blast the life of a child or the offspring of a pregnant woman, or to bring other calamities down from heaven on the heads of those with whom they are wroth. Once while I was stopping in a village on the border one of these gentlemen came to say his prayers in the mosque, and had left his shoes at the entrance, as is the custom. After he had said his prayers with great sanctimoniousness he went to resume his foot-gear, but found, to his dismay, that some thief had gone off with them. Then followed a torrent of curses on whoever the thief might be, in which all imaginable calamities and diseases were invoked on him and his relations, accompanied by every epithet of abuse in the Pashtu vocabulary, and that is pretty rich in them! The very volubility and eloquence of his anathemas would have dismayed any ordinary thief had he been within earshot, but whether he ever got back his shoes or not I cannot say.

Women who are childless will visit various faqirs, whose prayers have a reputation for being efficacious for the removal of sterility. They write charms, and dictate elaborate instructions for the behaviour of the woman till her wish be fulfilled, and they take the gifts which the suppliant has brought with her. Were this nothing more than a fraud dictated by avarice, it would be reprehensible, but worse things happen; and when a child is born after due time, the husband of the woman cannot always claim paternity. It is a strange thing that in a country where husbands so jealously guard their women from strangers they allow them so much freedom in their dealings with faqirs, whom they know to be morally corrupt. It recalls the Hindu Sadhu and divinity, who is popularly supposed to have attained an elevation where ethics are no longer taken account of.

In a religion such as Islam it is scarcely possible for an order of dervishes to be orthodox, and, as a matter of fact, most of them are extremely unorthodox, and there is often considerable disputing between them and the priesthood on this account. But the faqirs have such a hold over the people at large, and in many ways are so useful to the propagation of Islam, that the Mullah find it more politic to overlook their heresies and use them in the promotion of religious zeal and fanaticism.

It will be found that the underlying current of religious thought in nearly all these orders is that of Sufism, and Sufism is the product of the aspiration of the Mussalman soul, wearied with the endless repetition of forms and ceremonies, after something more spiritual; and in its search after this spirituality it has drawn most on the pantheistic philosophies of Hinduism.

Pantheism is, of course, the antithesis of the Judaic theocracy of Islam, and we read of a faqir who went about calling out, “Ana hu, ana el haqq” (“I am He, I am the Truth”), being put to death for blasphemy; but all the same, these Muhammadans, who feel most the aspirations of the soul for Divine communion, find it in a greater or less assimilation of pantheistic doctrine.

Most of the faqirs one meets with in Afghanistan are lazy fellows, who abhor hard work, and find they can make an easy living by begging, and acquire at the same time, what is so dear to many natures, the homage and respect of the credulous and superstitious. When one does meet with one who is willing and able to converse on spiritual topics, one usually finds that he is a disciple of Hafiz, the great Sufi poet of the Persians. Like the Hindu Sadhus, they are much addicted to the use of intoxicants (though rarely alcohol), and charras and bhang (Indian hemp) are constantly smoked with tobacco in their chilams. When thus intoxicated they are known as mast, and are believed by the populace to be possessed by divinity, and to have miraculous powers of gaining favours from heaven for those who propitiate them.

When such a faqir dies he is buried in some prominent place, often at the crossing of roads, and his tomb has even greater efficacy than he himself had when living; and those who wish to obtain his intercession with the Almighty for themselves bring little earthen cups full of oil, with little cotton wicks, which they burn at his grave, as a Roman Catholic burns candles at the shrine of a saint. The most propitious time for doing this is on Thursday night, and at such times one can see the tombs of most renowned sanctity a veritable illumination with the numbers of little lamps burning far into the night. At the same time offerings are given to the custodian of the shrine, who is himself a faqir, by preference a disciple of the one whose grave he tends.

In one such shrine that I visited there were the remains of what must once have been a fine sycamore-tree, but which was then, with the exception of one branch, a mere withered shell, which had to be propped up to prevent its falling to the ground. The one green branch was said to be miraculously kept alive by the shadow of the tomb falling on it; and if any childless pilgrim would take home a few leaves and give a decoction of them to his wife, he would assuredly before long be the happy father of a son; while for the relief of the other ills to which flesh is heir there was a masonry tank outside, in which the sick, the halt, and the blind bathed, and were said to receive the healing they came for. Many of our hospital patients have already been to this and similar faith-healing establishments, so they are not always efficacious.