Titre : | The Bektashi Order of Dervishes / auteur(s) : John Kingsley BIRGE - |
Editeur : | London: Luzac & Co./ Hartford: Hartford Seminary Press |
Année : | 1937 |
Imprimeur/Fabricant : | Burleigh Press, Bristol, GB |
Description : | 16,5 x 24,5 cm, 291 pages including bibliography and index. 31 plates on glossy paper, mostly reproduced photographs |
Collection : | Vol VII in Luzac's Oriental Religious Series |
Notes : | First edition |
Autres auteurs : | |
Sujets : | Dervishes |
ISBN : | |
Lecture On-line : | non disponible |
Commentaire :PART I CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY FACTS I. The General Place of Dervish Orders in Turkey and other Moslem Countries The study of mystic orders in Islam is one of particular importance if the Moslem world is to be adequately understood. The religion left by Muhammad very early developed in two directions. On the one hand it produced a rigid, scholastic theology with an inflexible religious law. At the same time, even from within the first two centuries, a tendency away from this fixed, external system showed its beginning and quickly developed into individuals and groups who emphasized the ascetic life and the mystical approach to direct knowledge of God. As orthodox canonists and professional theologians objected to this tendency to " search the conscience " on the ground that the ultimate result would be in the direction of heresy, organized bands or brotherhoods began to develop, based on the fundamental idea that " the fervent practice of worship engenders in the soul graces (fawaid], immaterial and intelligible realities, and that the ' science of hearts ' (Urn al kulub] will procure the soul an experimental wisdom (ma'rifa1)." Although the article Tarika in the Encyclopaedia of Islam makes the statement that " As a rule the number of persons affiliated to the brotherhoods in any particular Muslim country is not over three per cent, of the population," it appears certain that in Turkey and Albania, at least, the proportion of actual members and of those loosely affiliated is far greater. When the writer first visited Turkey in 1913 he went about under the impression he had received from books that Turkey was a Sunni (i.e. from the Muharnmadan point of view orthodox) country. He quickly found to his surprise that an enormous proportion of the people not only were affiliated with dervish brotherhoods, but even the leaders who appeared on Friday as Imams in the formal worship (namaz) in the mosque, were on other days to be found acting as Seyh's (Shaikhs) in dervish tekkes.1 During Muharrem, the month when Shi'ites especially remember the death of Huseyin and the early injustice done Ali and his family in taking the Caliphate from them, the writer visited tekke after tekke, and found in them all dervishes passionately mourning the death of Hasan and Huseyin. In discussing this matter later with one of Turkey's greatest scholars the writer expressed the impression that the Turkish people while outwardly Sunni were, under cover of their dervish brotherhoods, partially Shi'ite, at least in their tendencies, and certainly mystical rather than orthodox. The scholar replied that there in Constantinople where the proportion was presumably less than in the rest of the country, probably sixty per cent, of the people belonged directly or indirectly to dervish fraternities. He pointed out that in Christian countries we had in church history experienced our persecutions, Catholics killing Protestants and vice versa, but that there was a certain moral advantage in this. Deep sincerity, he said, lay behind these persecutions. Whereas, in Moslem lands, he continued, the practice of takiye, dissimulation, had grown up to make possible a man's continuing his standing as an orthodox member of the religious body while at the same time being a member of a mystic fraternity which emphasized an experiential rather than a traditional and formal approach to reality. In Turkey, therefore, this tendency to group life in a brotherhood of those seeking a direct knowledge of God must be recognized as a widespread tendency lying sometimes beneath the surface, but influencing probably the lives of a large majority of the people. In general, the ideology of such groups has come from Arabic and Persian sources, the more learned among the dervish leaders being well able to read and to write in these languages. The most important immediate sources of ideas for all the Turkish dervish orders have been the Mesnevi, a great poem written in Persian in the thirteenth century by Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, the patron saint of the Mevlevi dervish order, and the two Arabic works Futuhati Mekkiye and Fususul Hikdm by Muhyiddini Arabi (1165-1240). Lying as a foundation underneath the system developed by the influence of these books has been the common belief and practice of the Turkish people with their inherited customs from the Asiatic past. Certain orders, of which the Mevlevi's are the outstanding example, grew up chiefly in urban centres, as aristocratic, intellectual fraternities, especially attracting members from the upper classes on grounds largely of aesthetic appeal. Other groups, of which the Bektashis are the notable exponent, developed directly out of the life of the people. On the surface in these latter groups, lies the Islam which became the accepted religion of the people. Underneath have lain, all down through Ottoman history, customs and practices which came originally from the ethnic life of the various peoples who mingled together on the frontiers in the thirteenth century, and from amongst whom grew up a natural religion of the people. |