IN THE STEPS OF ST. PAUL

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 266, 22 August 1936, Page 7

IN THE STEPS OF ST. PAUL

SERIAL FEATURE

(By H. V. MORTON).

Copyright.

TURKEY WITH A NEW HAT. CHAPTER XXX. Hat and cap makers must have done excellent business in Turkey since Ataturk abolished the fez. I often wonder, however, what has happened to all the millions of forbidden fezzes. I have been told that many of them have been carefully hidden away by old Turks, who wear them in secret behind locked doors. This sentimental act, of course, reminds them of the good old days when a harem was a. harem, and women knew their places; when there was no nonenso about education or Latin alphabets: when, in fact, Turkey was Turkey. * * * * Strangely enough, the fez which until recently was the sign of a, Turk all over the world, was not of Turkish origin, "ft was Greek, or Byzantine. When the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, they took the fez cap and wound their turbans round it as a sign of conquest, and less than a century ago the turban was still the national head-dress of the Turk. Books about travel in Turkey, published during the last two hundred years, picture the extravagant dimensions of the turban, its variations, and the political significance of its shape, size: and colour. When the Sultan Mahmud abolished the turban in the course oP his European reforms about a century ago, the Turks had only to unwind the cloth to expose the Greek or Byzantine fez, which had been hidden since the fall of Constantinople! Now that Kemal has again reformed the country the fez has had: to go. “Do you really like wearing hats?” I asked Mustafa. “We like wearing what Ataturk tells us to wear,” he replied, drawing himself to attention. I began to wish that he would say something terrible about Ataturk. Sucli absolute devotion was getting on my nerves. Mustafa and I were walking through the cobbled streets of Konya, towards the mosque of the Dancing Dervishes, when I saw about fifty felt hats stacked on the pavement. They had obviously just been made, and were drying in the sun. Every one was bandless, giving them a curiously unformed and naked look. It was a typical little Turkish shop with a drawdown, slatted shutter over door and windows; and, as I took a photograph of the pile of hats, I smiled to think that I had discovered ono source of Ataturk’s hat supply. * * * * The door of the shop opened and a man, who had evidently been watching me from inside, came out on the pavement smiling all over his face, and politely invited me to enter. I have found that nearly every Turk, unless ■he is dressed as a policeman, is charming and good-natured and, above everything, loves a joke. He could see that I was amused by his pile of hats, and I believe he thought them rather funny, too, for as he led the way into his shop he looked hack to them and laughed. * * * * I was in a Turkish hat factory. Two hatters sat cross-legged on the floor —the only indication that they were Turks. 1 noticed that in an excess of loyalty they wore fine new undented specimens of the finest European pattern. Watching them at work, I wondered whether the Dictator would make tho cross-legged position illegal. My mind flew hack some weeks to a journey from Adana to Aleppo, in the Taurus Express. The train was held up for three hours by a landslide, which, fortunately, the engine-driver had noticed just in time i: * * * During those hours ail tho passengers descended and sat on the edge of the precipice on which we had stopped. I was interested in a grand young man who wore a vivid suit of plus fours. At first 'I thought lie was a Frenchman, then I came to the conclusion that he was Austrian. It was not until he sat on tho ground and crossed his legs in the most natural way that L realised he was a Turk. Everything outwardly Turkish about him had been obliterated except bis inherited manner of sitting ; but 1 have no doubt that such a brand-new Turk when at home, sits on a chromiumplated chair. However, the hatters of Konya, sitting like tailors, rubbed and pummelled the felt, while the owner of the shop chatted brightly and exhibited bis primitive blocking and steaming devices. “So this is an industry of New Turkey?” J inquired. “Oil, no„” replied Mustafa. "This is the shop that once made the tall felt hats for the Dancing Dervishes. But when the Dancing Dervishes were expelled and their mosque turned into a museum, wlmt were these men to do? They said to themselves.: ‘M e can make, good hats for the dervishes; why should we not alter the shape and make good hats for the farmers?’-”. I asked what kind of hats the Mevlevi dervishes used to wear, and; was told it was a tall, cone-shaped hat about a foot in height called a. kulali. The Mevlcvis say that before the world was created a spirit world existed in which the soul of Mohammed was present in the form of light. The Cieator took Mohammed’s soul and placed it in a vase, also of light, in the; shape of a kulali. The hatter smiled merrily and shook his head when I asked him if he. as a maker of many a kulali. believed the story. * ** * * “We cannot know such things,” no replied, smiling. I asked him if it is easier to made hats for rhe dervishes or for’Kemai’s "oya! subjects. He said tC.oic, was no comparison. A dervish up was a o(fieri It tiling to make, hut an ordinary felt hat was easy. He could turn them out ..by tlie hundred. And he waved his hand in proof towards the display on the pavement. “Is it moie pTofitable?” I asked And the hatter turned the palm of his hand upward and: patted invisible balls in the aim with it, beaming all

over bis "ace, its the Turks sometimes do when they wish to indicate tlmt all's right with rhe world. DANCING 'DERVISHES. CHAPTER XXX R J saw a bent old man in a brown tweed overcoat buying eggs in a bazaar at Konya. Even a comic little hat, such as small boys wear at tho seaside, could not disguise his air of hungry tragedy. And 1 thought that eyes followed him with interest as Ids tall, thirr body, with its flapping brown coat, moved from stall to stall. “He used to he one of the Dancing Dervishers,” I was told. “But the mosque is now a museum and Dancing Dervishes arc forbidden. How does ho live?” “Who knows?” “Is ho allowed to beg?” “No.” “Do people give him things for the sake of olcl times?” “Who knows?” I had to leave it at that. But 1 have the idea that in a town, which for centuries was the headquarters of this extraordinary cult, there must be a few kindly hands ready to thrust a. crust of bread towards an old dervish who cannot escape to one of tho many Mevlevi monasteries outside Turkey. Or has he renounced his religion and become an ordinary citizen? All religious communities have been affected by legislation in Turkey. Even Christian missionaries are affected. If Catholic monks or nuns wish to remain in the country they are obliged to wear ordinary clothes and find lodgings, because community life is not allowed I have heard that there are nuns in some cities who wear ordinary blue coats and skirts and have let their hair grow, hut, generally speaking, missionaries have left the country because religious instruction is not allowed in tho schools.

The wholesale confiscation of mosques and lands belonging to Moslem orders, and the suppression of these orders, sent a profound shock through Turkey in 1925. It was said they wore reactionary and a source of danger to tho young Republic. Therefore, with one stroke of the pen, tho amazing Ataturk calmly abolished them, seized their property, and turned their mosques into museums ; and no one except a few people like myself, who would like to seo a few Dancing Dervishes now and then, has been the worse for it. I believo there are about a hundred dervish orders in existence in the East. They are distinguished by their costume and by allegiance to various Holy men, their founders. Some of these dervishes are incredibly old and dirty and appear to ho mad. They will stop and beg in the most arrogant and insulting manner. The older, the dirtier and the madder they are, the- more peasants and country people revere them. Insanity in the East always entitles tho sufferer to respect. * 5P * * Most of the dervish orders practise some art which, resulting in a state of trance or ecstasy, is said to release tho soul from tho body. 1 have seen the disgusting Howling Dervishes in Algeria. They worked themselves into frenzy by repeating tho name of Allah, heating tom-toms, clashing cymbals, rising, swaying, and shouting, until foam gathered at the corners of their months. They became so insensible to physical pain that they were able to stick red-hot pins into their bodies. Tho Dancing Dervishes, who originated in Konya and have establishments all over the East, arc however, as interesting and attractive as the howlers are revolting. Their founder was Jalal-uddin Mevlana, the great Sufic poet of Persia, who was born in Asia Minor in 1207 and died in Konya in 1273. In Konya ho had won a great reputation for pieti and for the beauty of his mystical poetry. He evolved a number of moral and ethical precepts, the most famous of which is The Spiritual Matimawi, in 40,000 double—rhymed verses. His id“a of eternity was expressed as follows: — “You say the seas and it waves; tut in so saying you do not mean two different things, for tho sea, in its rising and falling, makes waves, and the waves, when they have fallen, return to the sea. So it is with men, who are the waves of God; they are absorbed after death into him.” Jalal-uddin was passionately fond of music, and he devised n devotional dance to the sound of flutes. I have seen this ceremony in Damascus. It is extremely impressive and beautiful. Tho word Dancing, or Whirling Dervishes does not really describe the movement. It would he more accurate to call them Turning Dervishes. The ceremony is solemn and dignified. After prayers, a band of either nine, ylevcn, or thirteen dervishes stands out on the empty floor, and a hands composed of eight musicians, playing old-fashioned instruments such as a dulcimer, a tabor, and a onestringed violin, strikes np a rhythmic and attractive tune. Tho dancers arc dressed in long, high-waisted, pleated gowns, that fall to the ground. They wear tail, coneshaped hats of felt. Each one, as he begins to turn, stretches his right a nil straight up, the palm held upwards to the roof, while the leit ann is held stiffly down with the palm towards the earth. The head is slightly inclined to the right shoulder. I asked a clervish if there, were any meaning to this posture, and ho replied : “The dance symbolizes the revolution of the spheres, and the hands symbolise the reception from above, and the dispensation to tho earth below, of a blessing.” * * tit * As the dancers turn and turn always in the same direction, like smoothly spinning tops, a strange mesmeric effect is produced. As they work up speed, their long pleated gowns begin to spread out until they stand straight out from the waist. The footwork is remarkable. No dancers ever collide, though they circulate in a small space. They make no noise. —at the music becomes faster and louder until the; name of Allah is chanted, when, in a second, the dancers check and stop; as they do so, their long gowns fall round: them and they bend in reverence to the ground. This dance is one of the most graceful spectacles I have ever seen. I went to the mosque in Konya

which lias boon the headquarters of this cult for seven centuries. It is kept just as the dervishes left it when they were expelled by order of the Republic. It is the fashion for the modern Turk to scoff at the superstitious and traditions of his fathers, and therefore the man who showed me round smiled in a superior way as ho described the various relics on view: the dress of the brotherhood, their musical instruments, their sacred hooks, and so forth. Buf I detected a note of reverence in him when we came to that mysterious dim place in the mosque where under embroidered cloths, lie the bar-rel-shaped tombs of Jalal-uddin and his father. * * * * The founder of the Mevlevi Dervishes died in 1273, and he is regarded throughout Islam as a great saint. The caretaker’s voice fell to a whisper as ho told me tho legend which explains why the tomb of the father is standing upright. It is evident that when they buried the son, they had to make room for his immense sarcophagus by altering the position of the father’s tomb. But that explanation is too prosaic. “When the great saint w,as carried in,” said the caretaker, “Behold, the tomb of his father rose up and bowed in reverence. So it has remained.” I was taken to the domestic quarters where the dervishes lived in. a whitewashed vaulted building, with a kitchen like that of an Elizabethan manor house. Their admirable library is still there, every book in its place on the shelves. * * * * One of the mysteries of the place, which no one could explain are tho English grandfather clocks. How, and why, did they find their way into the middle’of Asia Minor? One of them, an eighteenth century clock, was made by George Prior, of London. This dignified clock is also a musical-box. It bears on its face the words: “Horn-pipe-—air—song—dance. ’ ’ I would like to know how this bit of eighteenth century England found a home in the Mosque of the Dancing Dervishes. ' , (To be continued.)