The first part of the performance was the same as may be seen any evening, in any village, during the month of Ramadan.
About a dozen men sat in a double row facing each other, and, taking their time from a leader, began by slowly repeating the first words of the Moslem’s confession of faith: ‘Lá iláha illa-lláh,’ which they accompanied with a swaying of their bodies backwards and forwards. Gradually they would increase the speed of the repetition and the movements, always taking their time from the leader. This got faster and faster till their chief shouted ‘Alláh!’ Then, repeating this one word, the swaying of their bodies became so rapid that one or two fell down exhausted. The remainder kept it up as long as their physical endurance would allow; their mouths foaming, their faces livid, and a mad look in their eyes. Presently more would fall down; some lying still, and others to all appearance in their death agony. The cry of ‘Allah’ finally ceased when the leader fell forward, and, saving a gasp or a gurgle, all was still.
Some of us were preparing to leave when a sign from the conductor of our party kept us in our seats.
These bodies stretched on the floor—to all appearance dead or dying—looked ghastly in the light of the flickering torches.
We sat on some time wondering what the next move would be. A heavy breathing with alternate choking on the part of one of the performers directed our attention his way. After making several attempts to rise, he succeeded in getting into a sitting posture and stared vacantly at us. When he seemed conscious of where he was and what he was doing, he rose rapidly to his feet and spun round and round for several minutes; he next seized hold of a torch, continued his gyrations, and without stopping held the lighted torch under his one garment, allowing the flames to pass all over his body. It reminded me horribly of the straw fires with which peasants are wont to burn the bristles off a stuck pig.
A foreign princess who was of our party, and on whose behalf this zikr had been arranged, had now seen as much as she could stand, and she and her immediate suite went away.
The performers seemed quite unconscious of this disturbance; the man kept on spinning round, toasting his chest and then his back till he let fall the torch and sank down on the matting.
Another had in the meanwhile come to life again and begun to spin like a teetotum. He drew two knives from his girdle and, while continuing his motion, rested the points on his lower eyelids; he next hacked his face and forehead, and when the blood-letting had sufficiently cooled his frenzy he joined his companions on the floor.
The low muttered ‘Alláh’ from the other dervishes showed that they were awakening from the kind of cataleptic sleep they had fallen into.
A third one now arose and startled one of the spectators by rushing forward and seizing a tumbler near him; he bit off pieces of glass and crunched them in his teeth. He looked absolutely loathsome as he appeared to swallow the glass, with the blood streaming from his mouth. His craving for glass was not satisfied yet. The glass of an oil lamp near me caught his eye, and catching hold of it, hot as it was, he chewed it up as a half-starved dog would chew a bone.