The Story Teller of the Desert—"Backsheesh!" / or, Life and Adventures in the Orient

by Thomas Wallace Knox

CHAPTER XI—WHIRLING AND HOWLING DERVISHES—WHO AND WHAT THEY ARE.

The Dervishes of Constantinople, What are They?—How They Live and What They Do—Unclean and Devout Beggars—Where They Bury their Dead—Opening their Circus—Removing the “Doubter’s” Boots—An Amusing Situation—Clearing the Floor—Human Top-Spinning—Dropping into Jelly-bags—A Pliable Lot of Living Corpses—The Howling Dervishes—Where and How they Live—A House Full of Madmen—A Shrieking Chant—“La Hah il Allah”—Stirring up the Wild Beasts—Spectators Joining in the Chorus—Horrible Superstitious Rites—Treading on Sick Children—Reaching Paradise by Bodily Tortures—A Sad Disappointment—The Founder of the Sect and Who He Was—Pulling Teeth as a Proof of Sanctity.

ONE of the stock-sights of Constantinople is the performances of the dervishes, which can be witnessed every Friday throughout the year.

The dervishes are to Islam what the bare-footed friars are to Christendom; they are men whose lives are devoted to holiness and idleness in unequal portions, and they subsist upon charity or from the endowment of their mosques.

Most of the orders of dervishes in Constantinople, Damascus, and Cairo, have comfortable homes and very little to do; the members say their prayers daily, and devote an hour to their peculiar worship on Friday, and beyond this they do very little. But there are many dervishes not as well off, who are obliged to work or beg in order to make an honest living, and they greatly resemble Christian monks, in preferring beggary to labor. They argue that they have more time to devote to religious observances in the former case than in the latter, and therefore it is the duty of the less pious public to support them in idleness. But the public does not always see it in this light, and hence the dervishes sometimes find begging unprofitable, and are forced into respectable occupations. The dervishes are a lazy and uncleanly set. They profess to live a life of abstinence, but I was told of cases where they have been known to drink rum with great devotion.

The most noted of the dervishes are the Whirling and Howling sects; sometimes the former are called Dancers, and the latter Singers, but it is a libel upon dancing and singing to call them so. The performance of the Whirling Dervishes resembles dancing about as much as a frog resembles a prairie chicken; the Howling Dervishes could give a pack of wolves seventy-five points in the game and beat them easily, and their devotional exercises resemble singing as much as the noise of a monster tin-shop resembles the opera of Trovatore, as rendered at the London and Paris opera houses.

My first visit to these gentry was at the convent of the Whirling Dervishes. It is situated on the hill of Pera, close by the principal hotels, thus affording an agreeable contrast to our excursions among the mosques and bazaars, which requires a long walk to Stamboul. The convent covers quite an area, and has a neat garden and several cosy buildings. I was told that the convent owns several surrounding buildings, and that the income from these furnishes a very good revenue, on which the dervishes live comfortably. In the garden in front of the building there are the tombs of several “ex-whirlers,” and I was told that it is the practice of the monks to bury their dead on their own premises, instead of sending them to the Mount Auburn of Constantinople.

These dervishes are a decent lot of fellows, much less fanatical than the “howlers,” and always, ready to allow strangers to attend their circus, on condition that they leave their boots at the door and behave themselves, while the curtain is up.

Our party of half-a-dozen went there rather ahead of time, and was obliged to wait in the front yard for the opening of the hall. Some of the dervishes were around there and treated us just as they treated the fence or the gate posts. They said nothing to us nor we to them, except that our guide made a feeble effort to ascertain when the affair would begin.

By the time the doors were opened the party of spectators numbered thirty or more—all strangers like ourselves. There was the usual trouble in removing boots, and the “Doubter” was obliged to call a couple of Turkish loafers to assist him in getting his feet in order, for admission. He caused considerable delay, and it was suggested that for the future he had better leave his boots at home, and set up for a monk of the bare-footed order.