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 {167}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 {168}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.

When we were properly un-booted we were allowed to pass the doorway and stand in the interior of the convent.

The building is quite plain; the part that we saw was circular, and consisted of a space in the centre for sacred waltzes, with a floor carefully polished, and waxed to such an extent that it lacked very little to render it useful as a mirror. Around this arena there was a low balustrade, and between this balustrade and the walls was the station of the spectators. Our party of foreigners was allowed about a quarter of the space surrounding the ring, another portion was assigned to the musicians, while the remainder was devoted to Moslem spectators! Above this floor was a gallery supported by graceful columns; a part of the gallery was assigned to Moslem women, and there was a _loge_ or box for the Sultan whenever he chooses to honor the dervishes with his presence. At one corner is a little box for women, furnished with gratings for them to peep through.

The ornamentation of the ball room was as simple as that of the mosques--no pictures nor statuary, but only texts from the Koran, some of them highly illuminated. On the left hung a large board, like a table of laws; to what use it could be put was a puzzle. Lamps are hung all around the building. To the right of the place of worship, under a projecting roof, and of an octagonal form, is a marble fountain, of fine execution. Here devout Moslems perform their ablutions, before entering the main theatre.

We waited some time, and it was no easy matter to wait, as we had to rest like the party at a public dinner when somebody proposes the memory of Washington--standing and in silence.

After a while a solemn old fellow wearing a hat an inch thick and shaped like a sugar-loaf, entered the ring and squatted on a {169}small carpet which was spread just opposite the entrance. As soon as he was seated, the rest of the party, to the number of twenty-five or thirty, made their _entrée_ and bowed very low before the first comer. He was _sheik_, or chief of the lot; the rest were the rank and file--the common fellows who were obliged to wait his orders.

They did not come in with a rush, but very slowly, one and two at a time, so that they consumed at least a quarter of an hour in getting into their places.

In bowing to the _sheik_ they bent their bodies so that their backs became horizontal, and I longed for a spirit-level that I might ascertain if these fellows were on the square. Each of them wore a sugar-loaf hat like that of the boss, and like his, made of coarse felt of a reddish grey color. Each was wrapped in a long cloak of dark blue cloth, and as they stood in their places, they held these cloaks tightly around them. Later--after the service began, they threw aside these robes and revealed a long skirt of the same color, and not unlike a hoopless petticoat in its general appearance. The skirt was wide at the base, but gathered closely at the waist, and the part above the waist was by no means a bad fit.

The prayers began with the _sheik_ in the centre, and there were many prostrations, bows and genuflections before they were ended. Then there was a chant, which was taken up by the orchestra, in which the only instruments were flutes and light drums or _darboukas_. The music was not at all disagreeable, but, like all Oriental melody, had a good deal of monotony mingled with its plaintiveness. Up to the opening of the music, the dervishes were standing in the arena, and as it began, they closed their eyes, and seemed to be indulging in a species of intoxication. In a few minutes one of them began to turn mechanically, and at the same time opened and extended his arms with the palm of his left hand turned upward, while that of the right was downward.

Scarcely was he under way before another, and then another set his engines in motion, and in a few minutes the whole party was under a full head of steam. They whirled so rapidly that the centrifugal force caused their skirts to expand and stand out {170}at a sharp angle to the perpendicular, just as you have seen the dress of a fashionable woman extend itself during an exciting waltz. Sometimes they reminded me of so many pieces of machinery--their skirts forming a sort of cone.

These dervishes perform the double feat of whirling round and moving onwards at the same time.

Occasionally they revolve for awhile with both arms extended, like windmills.

Half of them appear to have their eyes closed, and to be dancing in a sort of drunken ecstacy, but somehow they did not run against each other, and the performance went on in good order. The chief whirled a little while with the rest, and then he moved about in the group urging the slow ones to whirl faster, and occasionally hurrying up the musicians, by beating time with his hands to a somewhat quicker measure. After a while he halted the music a couple of minutes, and the “whirlers”. slowed down to half speed and wiped off the perspiration. Several of the “whirlers” now drove back the surrounding crowd with sticks, and for about two minutes I thought there was a lively prospect of a first-class row.

The halt did not long continue. The chief gave a signal and the music began again as lively as “St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning,” for it was in double quick time, and made warm work for the gentlemen engaged. The whirling was now in dead earnest, and made the skirts expand like those of the première danseuse executing a _pas seul_ when she revolves across the stage {171}in her _finale_ which is to secure her the thundering plaudits of the audience.

They whirled.

And whirled.

And they kept on whirling.

And they whirled some more.

And they kept it up until the brains of the spectators were in a whirl, and some of them (spectators, not brains) had their money’s worth and went away.

After a while one of the dervishes threw up the sponge (figuratively), by sinking down on the floor in a state of exhaustion and perspiration.

He was as pliable as a jelly-fish, and the attendants who came to his relief handled him with care through an apparent fear that he would drop to pieces. Soon another fell, and then a third, and then a fourth, and then the chief gave the signal for stopping the _roulette_. The dervishes had been on the whirl nearly twenty minutes, and were quite ready to finish the game. Towards the end I noticed that the toes of some of them were terribly cramped, and the veins of their feet swollen like drum cords.

They gathered up their morning wrappers, and after bowing profoundly to their chief, walked slowly from the room. This was the end of the affair, and we returned to the outer door where we mounted our boots, paid our “backsheesh” and departed.

None of these dervishes were corpulent, but whether from accident or design I am unable to say. They were all of a lean and hungry build, and all were pale in the face except one, who {172}was a negro, and couldn’t have paled however much he wished to. Their exercise is not calculated to develop obesity, and if one should grow fat he would be obliged to change his profession, as he couldn’t keep up with the rest without killing himself with overwork. Their faces were not prepossessing as a general thing; some had a pleasing cast of features, but the majority were of an aspect decidedly forbidding.

Before we left the place I told our guide that I could give the chief a hint which might be of service to him.

“Tell the _sheik_ that we have machinery in America which we use for drying clothes in large laundries. The clothes are put into a cylinder which revolves above five thousand times a minute, and throws the moisture out by the centrifugal force.”

“Yes, but that no good would be for ze dervish. He dry his clothes just like somebody else, and no have much clothes to dry.”

“Not for his clothes,” I replied, “but for the service we have just attended. Let them erect such a machine in their ball-room, and have it large enough to hold all the worshippers. Put them inside and start the engine, and they could do more whirling in, fifteen minutes than they can do in a week in the old fashioned way.”

“I think ze Moslem no like such machine, but I speak to ze _sheik_ next time I see him. How much cost one machine?”

I went on to explain its cost and advantages to the innocent guide, who did not suspect that he was being hoaxed. Whether he spoke to the dervishes about it or not, I am unable to say, but at all events he never made any report of the matter to me.

The “Howling Dervishes” are another sort of devotees. Their convent where I visited them was more like a mosque than was that of the Whirlers, as it was much larger and had a high roof. The walls were bare of ornament, except of inscriptions from the Koran; on the side, where stood the altar, there was a lot of implements of warfare, including spears, arrows, old matchlocks, swords and various other odds and ends, all of an ancient appearance. We went through the usual process of leaving our boots at the door, but we were not obliged to stand during the performance. A polite attendant brought chairs enough for seating all the strangers, and thus made us comfortable. {173}There were about fifty worshippers, and they stood in a semicircle, with their chief inside. He began a low chant which included one of the chapters of the Koran, and was joined in the chant by the rest of the party.

At each verse they threw their heads forward, with a jerk, and immediately threw them backwards. The chant was very soon concluded, and without any pause the chief started the formula, “la Hah! il Alla!”

Now we began to understand why these pious individuals were called “howlers.” The sound that they produced was more like the noise of a menagerie, when the keeper stirs up the beasts, than like the tones of the human voice. It was a rough and rather prolonged bark and howl, in which the word Allah! was all that could be understood. The movement of the head became an inclination of the whole body from the hips upward; at one instant the men were bent nearly double, and at the next they had their heads thrown forward, so that their faces were horizontal, and there seemed a probability that the worshippers would fall backward.

They had removed their turbans, as no head-dress could stand this wild motion, unless glued or nailed on. Many of them wore their hair long, and the masses of _chevelure_ swung in the air like {174}so many dirty mops, from which a kitchen-maid is endeavoring to shake the superfluous water.

The noise became frightful, and several ladies of the visiting party, as well as some of the gentlemen, had their money’s worth in a very little while.

Every minute or two some of the dervishes fell exhausted to the floor; two foamed at the mouth and became wildly insane, so that it was necessary for others to hold them, or carry them out of the room.

There were several negroes in the room, and I observed that they howled the worst and were first to become frenzied. They raved like mad men, and indeed they were for a time furiously mad. I am sure Bedlam would be considered a quiet and well-behaved place, in comparison with the mosque of the “Howling Dervishes.”

There were fifty or more Moslem spectators, and some of those on-lookers became so excited that they joined in the service and soon were as frenzied as the rest. Among them was a soldier--a negro--who had not been five minutes in the charmed circle before he fell writhing to the floor, and foamed at the mouth, as though he had swallowed an entire soda fountain.

The spectacle is far more disagreeable than that of the whirling dervishes. You want to go away, and you are held there by a strange fascination; you cannot imagine how things can be any worse than they are five minutes after the howling has begun, and yet you know perfectly well that it will be much worse before the end. You feel that you have had enough and you want to go, and then you feel that you ought to stay, as you will miss some of the fun by leaving.

I don’t know a place where one is more swayed by conflicting emotions than while assisting at the devotional exercises of these gentlemen. I think an American or Englishman feels very much as did the tender-hearted Romans (if there were any), at the gladiatorial combats in the Coliseum, or at the _matinees_, where the Christians “on the half-shell” were served up to tigers that had been on short rations for a fortnight.

Civilization in its advance into the Orient has robbed these dervish-entertainments of some of their interesting features. {175}While the howling was going on, people used to bring sick persons, particularly children, and place them on a sheepskin spread on the floor inside the semi-circle. The chief stood upon these invalids and danced about on them, and this homoeopathic treatment was supposed to do the patients much good. If they recovered, it was natural enough that their cure should be considered miraculous; if they died it was in accordance with the will of God, and the dervishes could not be blamed for an occasional failure.

Then they used to wrap barbed chains around themselves, or around any person who had an inquiring turn of mind and wished to make an experiment.

They took down some of the swords and spears, and stuck the points into their arms and legs without manifesting any pain. In fact, they practiced a variety of tortures, or what seemed so to the infidel spectator.

When I went to the show that day, I was expecting a delightful time, as I had been reading a book in which all these entertainments were described. Soon after we entered the mosque, an officer with a couple of policemen at his side, came into the room and took his place against the wall, and inside the semi-circle, which was just then forming.

“What is that officer here for?” I inquired of the guide.

“He comes to regulate the behavior of the dervishes. To see that they do not tread on sick children, as they used to do, and to prevent the devotees from lacerating themselves.”

“And shall we have no tortures to-day?”

“None at all. The government forbids it.”

Imagine my disappointment. I had expected to lunch full of horrors, without returning to the hotel, and here I was cut down {176}to seeing a lot of grown men make temporary maniacs of themselves, and to hear the worst human howling that ever saluted my cars. All the beautiful pictures that my fancy had painted of seeing sick children trodden under the feet of the priests, and pious devotees cutting themselves with swords and spears, had quite vanished and would never be realized.

The age of sentiment is gone. Shall we ever welcome its return?

The Oriental governments are slow to move, but they do move after all. Moslem fanaticism is every year diminishing, and many of its cruelties are brought to an end. Occidental civilization in its aggressive course has accomplished much, and will do more as time rolls on.

Most of these sects are not held in great esteem by the people, though there are many Moslems who believe that the whirling, howling, and other performances of these gentry, are caused by divine inspiration, and consequently should be held in reverence.

The Turkish government has on several occasions contemplated the suppression of some of the orders of dervishes, particularly those that possess considerable wealth. There are persons uncharitable enough to suppose that this contemplated suppression is induced by the fact that the property of the dervishes would revert to the government in case the sects were discontinued.

Some of the sects have a great deal of fasting and prayer, and make their ceremonies interesting by the addition of various bodily tortures. It is said that a sect was founded in the first century of the Hegira by a holy man named Uvies. Among other farewells to worldly pleasures, he required his followers to draw all their teeth, in remembrance of the Prophet’s loss of two teeth at a battle on behalf of Islam. Painless dentistry was not, then in vogue, as nobody had discovered chloroform, ether, or laughing gas. Uvies did not get very far with his sect, and it expired soon after his death. Another pious Moslem tried to start a sect of dervishes in which every member should have his eyes put out during the ceremony of initiation. He was obliged to be chief and all hands, as he never found anybody to join his order. The devout Mohammedans couldn’t see it.

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