(1) It had taken me a week to track down the underground dervish scene in Istanbul - the only dervish contact I had in the city was a carpet-seller called Abdullah deep in the bazaar.
(2) Photographs can't prepare you for the disorienting feeling that the dervishes are defying gravity.
(3) The dervishes are all Sufis, seekers on the mystical path to God, and are members of different Brotherhoods, chief among them Mevlevis, the school founded by the mystic poet Rumi 700 years ago.
(4) Although no one could compare to Nusrat, the group remain formidable, and can be seen next month as part of the Barbican Centre's Ramadan Nights, which also features Sufi street singer Sain Zahoor, a more classical Arabic Sufi group, the al-Kindi Ensemble with Sheikh Habboush, and whirling dervishes from Syria.
(5) To keep cinemagoers happy, Abrams must deliver a dose of cosmic joy so pure and unfettered that it sets the midi-chlorians whirling like star-swept dervishes caught in the half-light of a departing X-Wing.
(6) The dervishes are meditation in movement, prayer as dance.
(7) 1979: Them Heavy People (the radio cut from the On Stage EP), which namedropped the Russian mystic Gurdjieff and Sufi whirling dervishes, a celebration of being intellectually-emotionally expanded: "it's nearly killing me … what a lovely feeling".
(8) Like much of Sufism, the performance of the whirling dervishes works on many levels and is charged with symbolism.
(9) Walking in the night air along the Bosphorus where the city light scintillated on the water, I envied the dervishes their passion, their longing and their faith.
(10) At the same time, at the instigation of the Chancellor, it is rushing about like a dervish in an attempt to head off every Labour stunt that comes along.
(11) Every comment on the Games repeats this line, as if Olympic spirit was a subset of whirling-dervish fundamentalism.
(12) In casting this off the dervishes discard all worldly ties.
(13) Finally I found myself at a zikr (a remembrance) among 80 or so dervishes in a hidden tekke (religious house), and they began to chant, rhythmically, the name of Allah.
(14) The abuse hits other religious minorities, too – the Yarsan Kurds; Gonabadi Dervishes, who are Shia Muslims; and Christians.
(15) Many European writers have been fascinated by Sufism - Richard Burton, the translator of the Kama Sutra, was initiated as a dervish, and Doris Lessing and Ted Hughes shared his interest ('the Sufis are the most sensible collection of people on the planet', Hughes once said).
(16) Still, there's no getting around it: Pakistan is beset with problems that no amount of jolly beer stories or whirling dervishes can remedy.
(17) However much time Oliver has spent in "poor communities", he is but a tourist there, looking at fire walkers and whirling dervishes and wondering "why on earth would they choose to do that?
(18) There was none of the passion I'd seen among the Istanbul dervishes.
(19) In any case, it is not surprising that Sufis and dervishes have had a tough time in many Islamic countries.
(20) When the tension was close to unbearable, 12 dervishes filed into the adjoining room and, in unison, took off their black cloaks - as if it were a holy fashion show - revealing white robes.
Mendicant
Definition:
(a.) Practicing beggary; begging; living on alms; as, mendicant friars.
(n.) A beggar; esp., one who makes a business of begging; specifically, a begging friar.
Example Sentences:
(1) That is why, among other reasons, it is regrettable that the British approach to China under the coalition has come to have about it something mendicant, cap in hand, and unduly deferential.
(2) Previously, the self-appointed political elite in Scotland has comprised a small, mendicant travelling band of senior politicians, political journalists and an assortment of talking heads who pop up on our television screens whenever there is an election or even just the hint of one.
(3) Whereas for a long time it was assumed that chloride ions were reabsorbed entirely passively with sodium--the "mendicant" role of chloride, more recent studies suggest that several distinct reabsorptive transport mechanisms operate in parallel.
(4) While Nauru in practice is best described as a “mendicant” or even “prostitute” state, its formal status has allowed Australia to put forward the legal fiction that the treatment of refugees on Nauru is a matter for Nauru, not Australia.
(5) Finn, Merivel writes, "describes himself as a portraitist, but leads, I discover, an almost mendicant life in the shires of England, going on foot from one great house to another, begging to paint its inhabitants".
(6) This surgery was frequently performed by itinerant mendicants, charlatans, and also by the more legitimate members of the surgical community living in the 13 states at the time of the Revolution.
(7) The main point of the World Bank study is active community participation which stops the paternalistic government-mendicant demanding populace pathology that is common today.
(8) During this time, too, it was relatively simple to claim housing benefit while subletting my student flat over the summer for nothing to the mendicant men who drank under the bridge in exchange for some of their Giro Party cargo (a dozen cans of Tennent's Super each Tuesday).
(9) Economically misgoverned for a generation, we are reduced to being principle-free economic mendicants, with Bambi Osborne and Thumper Johnson touring the world for hand-outs.