SERIAL “In The Steps of St. Paul.”

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3843, 7 December 1936, Page 3

SERIAL “In The Steps of St. Paul.”

(By

H. V. Morton

DANCING DERVISHES. I 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 the seaside, could not disguise his air of hungry 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 ths 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 tc various holy men, their founders. Some of these dervishes are 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 ecstasy, 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 originated in Konya and have establishments all over the East, are, 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 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 the 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 beautiful. The word Dancing, or Whirling Dervishes does not really describe the movement. It would be more accurate 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, jwhile the left arm is held stiffly down with the palm towards the earth. The head is lightly inclined to the right shoulder. I ask a dervish if there were any meaning to this posture, and he replied: “The dance symbolizes the revolution of the spheres, and the hands symbolize 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 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. But 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 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 dress of the brotherhood, their musical instruments, their sacred books, arid 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 barrel-shaped tombs of Jalul-ud-din and his father. The founder of the Mevdevi 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 prosiac. “When the great saint was carried in,” said the caretaker, “Behold, the tomb of Tiis 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 the English grandfather clocks. How, and wiry, 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.

TURKISH SCHOOL. Anyone who knew Turkey in the old days would be astonished could he sit for an hour at my window in Konya. Women who used to be veiled from head to foot now 7 walk up and down the street in Western clothes, and even stop to talk to their men acquaintances. They read fashion papers and do their best to copy the modes of Paris. The old-fashioned monumental woman, stuffed fat on sweets and idleness, is now merely a survival in Turkey. The modern Turk claims to admire slim women, and I notice that his advertisements for cigarettes and other products which give an excuse for the picture of a pretty girl, show a slender figure dressed in the latest fashion, drinking a cocktail. That is modern Miss Turkey. The most significant sight, as I look out of my window, is the large elementary school opposite, the finest naw building in the town. About half an hour before the janitor unlocks the gate, a hundred noisy little Turks, boys and girls, gather there with books under their arm, eagerly waiting to be let in. As soon as the gates open, I see children running from every corner, tearing across the the building. At the same time, groups of young Turkish girls, aged about eighteen, walk sedately past, carrying portfolios or attache cases. They wear dark blue coats and skirts and rakish peaked caps bound with gold braid. These are pupil-teachers on their way to an academy. Before the Republic they would have been closely veiled, and in a harem. The more I see of Turkey the greater is my admiration, for the achievements of Kemal, and his band of staff officers at Angora, who created, and now govern, the Republic.

Given ten years of peace, the world will see a new and remarkable Turkey. These men took over a country that was like an out-of-date factory, financed by absentee owners, riddled with inefficiency and nepotism, bound by tradition and custom, bankrupt and apparently hopeless. They have modernized it, flung over tradition, turned out the foreigner, and got the wheels to work again.

Kemal is not unlike Alfred ths Great. He has driven the Danes out of his kingdom and now, his sword cast aside, he is making new laws for his people. The soul of K’emalist Turkey is a Sinn Fein movement. The Turk has for centuries been submerged by Greek, Armenians, Jews, and other foreigners, in whose hands the whole commerce of the country was gathered. His language and religion have been invaded by Arabic words and beliefs. W'hat Kemal has done and is doing is to create a Turkish Turkey and, in order to do so, he has had to smash a thousand idols. Everything foreign must go. I am amazed by the apparent placidity with which the nation has seen the throwing-over of tradition, the disappearance of Sultan and Caliph, the change in social custom, the freedom of women, the abolition of national dress, and the virtual abolition of religion. Even those who view with cynical amusement the model he has taken of cocktail-drinking, fox-trotting, bowl-er-hatted Europe, cannot fail to admire the tremendous drive and courage of the Nazi in his determination to give Turkey a European status. He is even rewriting the history of the Turk in order to give his people a European, and not an Oriental, outlook. Of all his achievements perhaps the most interesting is the new system of education. I told Mustafa, who, as I have explained, is an ex-Kemalist officer, that 1 wanted to see through the big elementary school in Konya. “I think I shall let you go alone,” he said, to my surprise. “If I come with you 1 may disgrace myself and cry.” I looked at him in ahiazement! Was this the man who boasted of burning down farms, slaying rebels and charging with drawn sword on Greeks and royalists? “You don’t understand,” he cried “You coe from a country where education is easy, where there is nothing remarkable about a school. But think! When I was a boy, I sat on the floor in a grimy building outside a mosque while an old man, who did not care whether we listened or not, read the Koran to us. That was Turkey in my youth. But now it is different. Every young Turk, boy and girl, can get knowledge free. Learning is like water in your country. It is free. Everywhere—free! I tell you, you cannot understand. When I see these children—l, I feel it here ...” And Mustafa, the cavalry officer, gave himself a great blow over the heart.

However, we went together to the school, a light, airy building on the most modern lines. There was a bust of Ataturk in the entrance hall. The headmaster told me that all classes are mixed. The teachers are men and women. The old Arabic alphabet is taboo. Every word written or spoken in the school is the new Turkish language, written in Latin characters. Religion is not allowed to be taught. Wie went into a class-room. The fifty little Turkish boys and girls stood instantly to attention. The class-room might have been that of any London County Council school. Each child had a desk of his own. There was a blackboard on which a young woman teacher had been writing. At the back of the room was a large tray of sand, perhaps six by three feet. The smaller children are taught the alphabet in a pleasant and original manner. They fill small funnels with sand and, rather as a cook ices a cake, spell letters in sand, controlling the flow by placing a finger across the hole in the funnel. WJhen the master asked the class if any boy or girl would like to stand forward and write a sentence on the board, every hand shot up. A small boy with a close-cropped head was chosen. He walked out without the slightest embarrassment and took the chalk. In a sure and efficient way he wrote a sentence on the board, bowed to the headmaster, and went back to his desk. “What has he written?” I asked. “ He has written,” said the headmaster, “ ‘When I grow up, I will be of service to my country.’ ” I looked round to say something to Mustafa, but was just in time to see him disappearing round the door with his handkerchief to his eyes. I was taken into class-room after class-room. I was impressed by two things: the solemn intelligence of the children and the fact that girls and boys worked together in perfect equality. For centuries the Turk has been brought up to regard woman as an inferior being. A son is the god of a house, but the daughter is the servant. You might think that this feeling, existing century after century, would have had some effect on the atmosphere of a mixed class of girls and boys. But the atmosphere of the harem and the subjection of woman has had no effect on this generation. Sudden-

ly the play-time bell rang through the school. There was a crash of feet all over the school as children stood to attention. They marched out two by two, singing a patriotic song. Mustafa wiped his eyes again and coughed, blowing his nose violently. “You see the new Turkey,” he whispered. “Is it not wonderful?” The headmaster stood beaming in the hall as the long, singing files of children marched out into the sunlight. And I was vividly reminded of the sentimental adoration which the Spanish Socialists lavish on children in the Republican schools of Madrid. In their eyes and in their young voices they seem to see the new Spain. And it is the same in Turkey to-day. “These are the teachers the doctors, the architects of new Turkey!” cried Mustafa, his voice charged with emotion and pride. And the little dark-eyed and the little blue-eyed Turks passed, singing under the bust of Ataturk. “AND FLED INTO LYSTRA.” During spring, the motorist in Asia Minor must consider the weather with the care of an airman. The reason is that a few miles from the town the road vanishes into tracks of beaten earth, which ten minutes of heavy rain are enough to turn into quagmires of sticky mud. Therefore, if you intend to make a real journey into the country, you must, unless you are prepared to spend the night in the wilds, choose a rainless day.

IWhen reading apocryphal gospels, I have often noticed the frequency with which sudden violent rain descends at the critical moment and quenches .flames that were, licking the feet of Christian martyrs. Another frequent intervention is the sudden thunderstorm, and the flash of lightning which strikes down the enemies of Christianity. Having seen the extraordinary local cloudbursts so frequent in the mountains of Asia Minor, rain which can turn a square mile into mud while the rest of the country is dry as a bone, I wonder whether these “miracles” are not perhaps a memory of this climate. However, the day looked good; and I set off from Konya towards the mountains of the south to find the site of Lystra. The, road soon faded into a camel track that ran over a green plain towards distant foothills. My driver, a Turk from Konya, was well used to cross - country driving, and he took his car with the greatest of ease over obstacles that no ordinary motorist would have tackled. I wondered what the American manufacturer of this car would have said could he have seen it crossing miles of ploughed fields, leaping small water-courses, traversing hills where splintered rocks stood up a foot from the surface of the ground so that our progress was a kind of obstacle race. As we moved to the south we came suddenly in view of the distant Taurus range, and a more magnificent group of mountains I have never seen in my life. They lay in blue shadow on the edge of the sky, great clouds rising above them and their sharp peaks whitened with snow. Those mountains explain the presence in Paul’s day of a Roman colony at Lystra. In ancient times the Taurus was full of robbers and bandits. Augustus Caesar was determined to stamp them out and give security to cities of the plain, and therefore settled a number of Roman soldiers at Lystra, giving the place, hitherto a humble Lycaonian town, the dignity of colonial status.

The town had Roman magistrates, a native Lycoanian population, with a few Greeks and Jews: a population accurately reflected in the narrative of Paul’s visit. The Apostles, Paul and Barnabas fled from Iconium because the Jews were stirring up trouble against them. As they entered Lystra, Paul saw, as one so frequently sees in the East to-day, a man who had been a cripple since birth. I suppose he. was crouched in the dust of the city gate, begging from travellers; many like him are begging to-day in Aleppo and Damascus. Paul, after “steadfastly beholding him,” saw “that he had faith to be healed.” He cried in aloud voice: “Stand upright on thy feet!” and the man leaped and walked. “And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, the gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.” The reader of the Bible, must have often wondered why these Lycaonians jumped to this extravagant' conclusion. The reason is that the story of Philemon and Baucis belongs to this part of Asia Minor and was known to every man, woman and child who saw St Paul and St Barnabas. The story is that Jupiter, the King of the gods, and Mercury, messenger of the gods, once visited Phrygia disguised as mortals, and found no person willing to give them hospitality until they came to the hut of an old couple called Philemon and Baucis. The two old people sheltered the gods and gave them food, with the reward that, when the district was flooded, they were taken to safety while others perished. Their hut was transformed into a splendid temple, of which they became the priests. Naturally, when the Lycaonians saw the two commanding stranger,and the healed cripple, they believed the old story had been repeated; and

they were determined that this time there should be no lack of courtesy to the disguised deities. “And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Meirourius, because he was the chief speaker.” The Acts of the Apostles is full of unexplained incidents like this, true to local habits and conditions but not obvious, save to a student of the period. Another life-like touch is that neither Paul nor Barnabas understood what all ithe excitement was about, for they had left the Greek-speaking cities of the great trade route, and were l in a place where native Anatolians were using a local dialect which neither of the Apostles could speak. When they did understand, they ware horrified! They saw the priest of Jupiter, whose temple stood just outside the city, leading forth garlanded oxen to sacrifice to the gods. “Sirs,” cried the Apostles, rending their garments in dismay, “why do ye do these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you, that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God which made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein.” Even so, they had difficulty in dissuading the excited Lycaonians from slaying the oxen. Unfortunately a new turn was given to the occasion by the arrivel, post-haste from Iconium, of the Jews who had stirred up trouble against the Apostles. These men worked on the passions of the ignorant Lycaq«iians, with the result that Paul was taken to the city boundary and stoned until hei was belived to be dead Lystra lies framed against a background of mighty mountains, in a watered vale bright with poplar trees. The bridge that crosses the river to the Turkish village of Katyn Sclrai is composed of Roman stones taken from Lystra. I saw altars, tomb-stones, the cornices of temples, all lying together in the fabric of this bridge, and nothing could more vividly illustrate the ruin which had fallen on Lystra. But where was Lystra? A villager pointed towards a green hill about a mile from the village. There was not one building on it. On the hillside, 1 discovered in a sheep-fold about fifty enormous squared blocks of stone, probably a relic of the Roman town wall. The hill itself was a mass of broken pottery. When I stuck the ferrule of my stick into the earth and turned it, I picked out the base and rims of several ancient howls. No doubt beneath this hill are the foundations of the. temples and public buildings of Lystra. On the level ground at the foot of the hill the villager took me to a stone about four fdet in height, and I saw with delight that the boundary stone of the colony which definitely established the situation of Lystra, is still in position. For half a centry archaeologists and explorers looked for the site of this city, but it was not until 1885, when an American expedition discovered and read this stone, that Lystra ceased to be a mystery.