“In the Steps of St. Paul.”

Kaikoura Star, Volume LVI, Issue 88, 9 November 1936, Page 4

“In the Steps of St. Paul.”

A SERIES OF ARTICLES BY

H. V. MORTON.

ARTICLE No. 31

I saw a bent old man in a brown tweed overcoat buying eggs in a .bazaar at Konya. Even a comic little hat, such us small boys wear at the seaside, could not disguise his air of hungiy tragedy. And I thought that eyes followed him with interest as his tall, thin body, with its flapping brown coat, moved from stall to stall. “He used to be one of the Dancing Dervishes,” I was told. ‘ ‘But the mosque is now a museum and Dancing Dervishes are forbidden. How does he live?” “Who knows?” “Is he allowed to beg?” “No.” “Do people give him things for the sake of old times?” “Who knows?” I had to leave it at that. But I 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 the 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, but generally speaking, missionaries have left the country because religious instruction is not allowed in the 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 were reactionary and a source of danger to the young republic. Therefore, with one stroke of the pen, the 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 see a few Dancing Dervishes now and then, has been the worse for it. I believe 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 arc incredibly old and dirty and appear to be 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 the sufferer to respect. Most of the dervish orders practise some art which, resulting in a state of trance or ccstatsy, is said to release the soul from the body. I have seen the disgusting Howling Dervishes in Algeria. They worked themselves into frenzy by repeating the name of Allah, beating tom-toms, clashing cymbals, rising, swaying, and shouting, until foam gathered at the corners of their mouths. They became so insensible to physical pain that they were able to stick red-hot pins into their bodies. The Dancing Dervishes, who oridinated in Konya and have establishments all over the East, arc, however, as interesting and attractive as the howlers arc revolting. Their founder was Jalal-uddin Mcvlana, the great Sufic poet of Persia, who was born in Asia Minor in 1207 and died in Konya in 1273. In Konya he had won a great reputation for piety 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 Mathnawi, in 40,000 double-rhymed verses. His idea of eternity was expressed as follows: “You say the sea and its waves; but in so saying you do not mean two different things, for the 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 a devotional dance to the sound of flutes. I have seen this ceremony in Damascus. It is extremely impressive and I beautiful. The word Dancing, or Whirling Dervishes does not really describe the movement. It would be more ae-

curate to call them Turning Dervishes. The ceremony is solemn and dignified. After prayers, a band of either nine, eleven, or thirteen dervishes stands out on the empty floor, and a .band composed of eight musicians, playing old-fashioned instruments such as a dulcimer, a tabor, and a onestringed violin, strikes up a rhythmic and attractive tune. The dancers are dressed in long, high-waisted, pleated gowns, that fall to the ground. They wear tall, coneshaped hats of felt. Each one, as he begins to turn, stretches his right arm straight up, the palm held upwards to the roof, while the left arm is held stiffly down with the palm towards the earth. The head is slightly inclined to the right shoulder. I asked a dervish if there were any meaning to this posture, and he replied : “The dance symbolises the revolution of the spheres, and the hands symbolise the reception from above, and the dispensation to the earth below, of a blessing. ’ ’ As the dancers turn and turn, always in the same direction, like smoothly spinning tops, a strange mesmeric effect is produced. As they word up speed, their long, pleated gowns begin to spread out until they stand straight out from the waist. The footwonk is remarkable. No dancers ever collide, though they circulate in a small space. They make no noise. But the music becomes faster and louder until the name of Allah is chanted, when, in a second, the dancers 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 over seen. I went to the mosque in Konya which has been 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 superstitions and traditions of his fathers, and therefore the man who showed me round smiled in a superior way as he described the various relics on view: the dross of dress of the brotherhood, their musical instruments, their sacred books, and so forth. But 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 he told me the 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 was 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 arc the 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: “Hornpipe—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. (Article No. 32 will appear in our