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Dervish   /dˈərvɪʃ/   Listen
Dervish

noun
1.
An ascetic Muslim monk; a member of an order noted for devotional exercises involving bodily movements.



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"Dervish" Quotes from Famous Books



... baronet demanded. "What jugglery is this? Are you dressed for an Eastern dervish in a melodrama, and have you come here to play a practical joke? I am afraid I can not appreciate the humor of the masquerade. Who ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... a week slipped by, and at length he found himself crossing a desert with great rocks scattered here and there. In the shadow cast by one of these was seated a holy man or dervish, as he was called, who motioned to the youth ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various

... that wonderful gathering; yet I have always thought that any religious service that does not inspire you with a desire to join heart and soul in it, is a miserable failure. I am afraid if I had to choose between the two, I would rather be a dancing dervish than a McDonaldite. However, perhaps if I understood the doctrines of each I might choose the other way. But that brings me back to the beginning again, and makes me wonder how it is that no one seems to really know why they take the ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... have rapidly secured for themselves a considerable Socialist following, and if one takes note of their views, one cannot help doubting whether their motives are entirely disinterested. The following utterances, for instance, one would expect from the mouth of a Soudanese dervish or an Indian fakir, but not from the pen ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... In Suez a fortune-telling dervish, perhaps because he had just seen an American pass by, told Hamoud-bin-Said that his wanderings would take him to America. Hamoud accepted the words of the holy man as a second-hand pronouncement of God. At that time there was even a ship at ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... congratulation." The old woman rejoined, "O my child, I will carry thee to him and do thou cast thy burden on him and make a vow to him: haply when thy husband shall return from his journey and lie with thee thou shalt conceive by him and bear a girl or a boy: but, be it female or male, it shall be a dervish of the Shaykh Abu al-Hamlat." Thereupon Khatun rose and arrayed herself in her richest raiment, and donning all her jewellery said, "Keep thou an eye on the house," to her maid, who replied, "I hear and obey, O my lady." Then she went down and the porter Abu Ali met her and asked ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... No dervish ever questioned the curse of the priestess. The only time a revolt was imminent was in the autumn of 1884 when the Conklins returned from their season at Duxbury, Massachusetts, and Mrs. Conklin took up the carpets ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... you would have heard," he said. "Didn't Daisy know? He came back to us from Simla—got himself attached to the punitive expedition. I was on the sick list myself, so did not see him, but they say he fought like a dancing dervish, and did a lot of damage too. Every one thought he would have the V.C., but there was a rumour that ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... had entered Meshed in an unlucky hour, and determined to leave it. Dressed as a dervish I joined a caravan ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... prophecies issued from him, sublimely eloquent and inordinately rapid, so that on his recovery he went about crying, "Repent! Repent! I was a mocker and a sinner. Repent! Repent!" The Moslems themselves began to waver. A Turkish Dervish, clad in white flowing robes, with a stick in his hand, preached in the street corners to his countrymen, proclaiming the Jewish Messiah. "Think ye," he cried, "that to wash your hands stained with the blood of the poor and full of booty, or to bathe your feet which have ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... and hoots the midnight owl; The tree of knowledge in your garden grows Not single, but at every humble door; Its branches lend you their immortal food, That fills you with the sense of what ye are, No servants of an altar hewed and carved From senseless stone by craft of human hands, Rabbi, or dervish, Brahmin, bishop, bonze, But masters of the charm with which they work To keep your hands from that ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... in Stamboul," he said, "talked too loud of this place in my hearing." I stood gnawing a loaf already, and I urged him to take one, but he would eat nothing until all the men should have been fed. "They detrain Dervish troops at this point," said he, "and march them to the shore to be shipped to Gallipoli, because they riot and make trouble if kept in barracks in Skutari or Stamboul. This bread was intended ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... watched those people you got up around the altar-rail, groaning and shouting and crying, and the others jumping up and down with excitement, and Sister Lovejoy—did you see her?—coming out of her pew and regularly waltzing in the aisle, with her eyes shut, like a whirling dervish—I positively believe it was all that made me ill. I couldn't stand it. I can't stand it now. I won't go back to it! ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... no other concerted charge for a long time. Now and then some painted brave, chanting a death song, would ride slowly toward the wagon park, some dervish vow actuating him or some bravado impelling him. But usually ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... in rapt attention, when suddenly one of the women started up and began dancing, keeping capital time to the music. The faster Cudjoe played the faster she danced, till every limb and muscle seemed in movement. Round and round she went in front of the hideous fetish: no dervish of the East could have danced more furiously. Presently she was joined by a man, who danced in the same manner round and round her. One after the other, the whole of the women, with partners, took a part in the performance; I could ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... of Zabara, Abraham ibn Chasdai did the best he could with his misogynist material, but he could get no nearer to a compliment than this, "Her face has the shimmer of a lamp, but it burns when held too close" ("Prince and Dervish," ch. xviii). The Hebrew attacks on women are clever, but superficial; they show no depth of insight into woman's character, and are far less effective than ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... across it, laughing merrily, when, with the suddenness of a lightning-stroke, everything grew black and began to spin around her. She looked helplessly at Dwight, whose grinning face was like that of a whirling dervish, made a little lurch forward, and would have fallen, but that watchful Mr. Malcolm caught her just in time. He at once sent a boy for the stewardess, and they soon had the half-unconscious girl safe inside ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... the arms are more or less conventionalized imitations of the act of striking with a club, or hurling a spear, and other acts. To such elements many other things have been added, but the fact remains that our own formal dances, as well as the sun-dance of the Indian and the mad whirl of the Dervish, are modern products which have ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... at his palace gate, Sits, while in line his pages round him wait; When a poor dervish, staff and sack in hand, Straight would have entered IBRAM'S palace grand. 'Old man,' the pages asked, 'where goest thou now?' 'In that hotel,' he answered, with a bow. The pages said,—'Ha! dare you call hotel A palace, where the King of Balkh doth dwell?' IBRAM the King next to the dervish ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the corridor singing, "Safe in the Arms of Jesus." If he had given heed to one-half we said to him, he would have been safer in our hands than in those of his imaginary protector. He turned out a thief, an unmitigated liar, a dancing dervish, and, through all our experiences of six weeks with him, his chief reading was his Bible and Sunday-school books. The experience, however, was not lost on Theodore—he has never suggested a boy since, and a faithful daughter of Eve reigns in ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... scream was heard, as if the last of expiring human nature. How it shook these two, till the very leaves rustled, and the night-hawks and owls screamed their terrible discord! All was still again. The male ran, as if moved by the frenzy of a dervish, forward towards the Cradle; then, as he saw the door half open, retreated. Aminadab could make nothing of the figure, beyond the conviction that it was the same he had seen by fitful glimpses before. It was ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... the story told by Addison of a sultan, who was persuaded by a dervish to dip his head into a basin of enchanted water, and thereupon found himself upon some other globe, a son in a poor man's family, married after certain years the woman of his heart, had a family of seven children whom he painfully brought up, went afterwards ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... "Well, old whirling dervish," Mr. Gibney demanded calmly when Scraggs paused for lack of breath to continue his dance, "what about it? We're up Salt Creek without a paddle; all hell to pay and no ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... have had the heart's blood of this respectable Dervish; that is to say, they have stolen ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... people living in the midst of heathen surroundings; and heathenism always has laid stress upon the virtue of these abnormal experiences. Granting all allowances for mental states induced by eating an opiate, or by whirling like the dervish, or by fasting like the Hindu, the fact remains that in the main, the visions of the writers of our Scriptures came out of attempts to realize in conduct the moral will of God. When we think of the surroundings even of the early church; when ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell

... was said of the ancients, "Leave travel, though but for a mile."' Then he said to his son, 'Art thou indeed resolved to travel and wilt thou not turn back from it?' 'Needs must I journey to Baghdad with merchandise,' answered Alaeddin, 'else will I put off my clothes and don a dervish's habit and go a-wandering over the world.' Quoth Shemseddin, 'I am no lackgood, but have great plenty of wealth and with me are stuffs and merchandise befitting every country in the world.' Then he showed him his ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... the country, four years before, Arabi pasha had revolted, and been crushed at Tel-el-Kebir, and a dervish in the Soudan, Mohammed Ahmed by name, had made himself famous by proclaiming himself mahdi, the expected prophet of the whole Mahometan world. Thousands flocked to the standard that he raised, and his armed escort stood with drawn swords in his presence. The Egyptian governor-general summoned him ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... moods and lends value to otherwise worthless paper. Five dollars would make me chirk up; ten would start a slight smile; twenty would put a beam in mine eye; fifty would cause me to utter shrill cries of unadulterated joys and a hundred would inspire me to actions like unto those of a whirling dervish. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... soldiering in the East, and knows more about Eastern affairs than any living man. Yes, I mean it. He knows any amount of Eastern dialects; speaks Arabic and Turkish like a native, and has a regular passion for mixing himself up in Eastern matters. He can pass himself off as a Fakir, a Dervish—anything you like. He knows the byways of Eastern cities and Eastern life better than any man I know of, and obtained a great reputation in certain official quarters for discovering plots inimical to British interests. That's Maurice St. Mabyn. A jolly chap, you understand, as straight as a die, ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... grumbled the dervish. And, at a sign from him, the others again went and brought, as at the first time, purses of gold and ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... the Dervish whirl, The Brahmin's rite, the Lama's spell; God knew the heart; Devotion's pearl ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... informed" is emphatic, and therefore should be inverted, "whether he was, &c., we are not informed." (g) "but he" will be omitted when "the Vizier" is made the subject of "pretended." (h) "Pretended" once meant "claimed," "professed." Write "professed." (i) "a certain dervish." (j) Introduce a new subject that you may substitute "Vizier" for "he," thus: "so that not a bird could open its mouth, but the Vizier knew &c." (k) "As he was, one evening, &c." (l) Note that ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... completeness of all her manifestations. The audience was rich in the possession of the whole of her individuality, which was a great deal. She sang, danced, chattered, froze, melted, laughed, cried, flirted, kissed, kicked, cursed, and turned somersaults with the fury of a dervish, the languor of an odalisque, and the inexhaustibility of a hot-spring geyser.... And at length Mr. Prohack grew aware of a feeling within himself that was at war with the fresh, fine feeling of physical well-being. "I have never seen a revue before," ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... certain. 'I dwell on the joy of never seeing Great Britain again, with its horrid, wearisome dinner-parties and miseries. How we can put up with those things, passes my imagination! It is a perfect bondage... I would sooner live 'like a Dervish with the Mahdi, than go out to dinner every night in London. I hope, if any English general comes to Khartoum, he will not ask me to dinner. Why men cannot be friends without bringing the wretched stomachs ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... said the professor bluffly. "Why, Yussuf, I believe now in the story about the dervish who was asked if he met the camel, and told the owners all about it: the lame leg, the missing tooth, the load of rice on one side, the honey on the other, ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... every kind of ceremony, whether it was a circumcision, or a wedding, or a funeral, or a dervish dance, or anything that was going on; and we mixed with all classes, and religions, and races, and tongues. I remember my first invitation was to a grand fete to celebrate the circumcision of a youth about ten years of age. He was very pretty, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... "philosophy" from Bergson or, at least, leans on him. There are intuitions and intuitions, as every wise man knows, as William James once ruefully admitted after his adventures with nitrous oxide, or as the eaters of hashish will confess. To follow all our intuitions would lead us into the wildest dervish dance of thought and action and leave us spent and disheartened at the end. "Agnosticism" would be too mild a term for the result. Our intuitions have to be tried and tested; there is a thorny and difficult path ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... junk, minus one ear and two fingers, but plus a cargo of jingling genuine money. He hired the bridal suite in the leading hotel, got hold of a fleet of motor cars and a host of boon companions, lived on a diet of champagne cocktails and splashed himself about with the carefree abandon of a dancing dervish. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various

... So I cand talk to you!" Piney's was a reckless and impassioned young figure, cut out against the sky sharply, on a pony that danced like a dervish. ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... had never met a people of a more peaceful temperament, and, on the other hand, none more easily frightened. A dread of the evil eye is one of their characteristics. We had not been settled long before the ishan, or itinerant dervish, was called in to drive away the evil spirits, which the "devil's carts" might possibly have brought. Immediately on entering, he began to shrug his shoulders, and to shiver as though passing into a state of trance. Our dervish acquaintance ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... so many years. It's nice and dirty by this time, I expect,' he says. Then the grin comes on his mouth again. 'I'll open it some day,' he says, 'and look. There's something in it about comparing me to a dancing dervish, with the wind in my petticuts. Perhaps I'll get the chance to set ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... already done it. The dervish dance in his head had culminated in one grand merry-go-round blotting out consciousness altogether, and he had ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... not believe in this sleeve, his soul, immediately after his death, when passing over the pointed bridge, would fall for ever into the abyss. He has been told even worse things: If ever you have doubts about this sleeve, one dervish will treat you as impious; another will prove to you that you are an insensate fool who, having all possible motives for believing, have not wished to subordinate your superb reason to the evidence; a third will report you to ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... old man, their leader, went Throughout his spinning fellowship, And reverently to the ear, Of every dervish circling near, He spake ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... it. All that had gone before was merely preparatory, a blood-warming, so to say; the real thing now took place. He stood up on his hind legs and shot into the air, alighting on his four feet as if to pierce the earth. He whirled like a howling dervish, grunting, snorting—unseeing, and almost unseen in a nimbus of dust, strap ends, and flying pine needles. His whirling undid him. We seized the rope, and just as the pack again slid under his feet we set shoulder to the rope and threw him. He came to earth with a thud, his legs whirling uselessly ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... did my fifteen-inch equatorial. But still he had no difficulty in making out groves of hemlock, and the circular openings. And although he could not make out my thirty-seven flies, still when 10.15 came he saw distinctly the black square crossing from hole Mary to the edge, and beginning its Dervish dances. They were on his edge more precisely than on mine. For Orcutt knew nothing of Tamworth, and had thought his best chance was to display for No. 9. So was it that, at the same moment with me, Haliburton also was spelling out Orcutt & ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... the tales from a Persian work called Hezar [o] Yek Roz, i.e. "The Thousand and One Days," the MS. of which had in 1675 been communicated to the translator by a friend of his, by name Mukhlis, (Cazotte styles him "the celebrated Dervish Mocles, chief of the Soufis of Ispahan") during his sojourn in the Persian capital. The preface goes on to state that Mukhlis had, in his youth, translated into Persian certain Indian plays, which had been translated into all the Oriental languages and of which a Turkish ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne

... the beast, sonny," Martha pleaded as she knelt on the grass and caught the dancing boy by his arm and brought his dervish gyrations to a halt. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... origin. One of the stories is a fantastic account of the Birth of Mahomet, including romantic travels largely borrowed from No. 132a. Another story is a version of that of the Seven Sleepers. Other noteworthy tales are the story of the Dervish Abounader, which resembles Nos. 193 and 216d; and the story of Naerdan and Guzulbec, which is a tale of magical illusions similar to that of Monia Emin, in the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... 'ala ma' lakati 'l-Hilal shay misl al-Jinnah." [I have no doubt that "Kulah" is meant for "Kulah," a Dervish's cap. "Busah" puzzles me. I am inclined to take it for a reed used as a case or sheath, as we shall see p. 263 of the MS. Prince Yusuf uses a "Kasabah" or reed to enclose a letter in it. "Mi'lakat (popular corruption ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Alfred, after Mr Campbell had finished speaking, "having somewhere read a story of an Eastern king who purchased a proverb of a dervish, which he ordered to be engraven on all the gold and silver utensils in the palace. The proverb was, 'Never undertake anything until you have well considered the end.' It so happened, that there was a conspiracy against the king, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... of Benjamin, indeed, a few Israelites still maintained a fitful independence, and Samuel, the representative of the traditions of Shiloh, was allowed to judge his own people, and preside over a Naioth or "monastery" of dervish-like prophets under the eye of a Philistine garrison. Israel seemed about to disappear from among ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... mean it," shouted Jack. "Why else do you think I'd be dancing around here like a whirling dervish? Come on and join the crowd. The armistice has ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake

... followed by Ned, Dick being last of the party. Dick heard a sudden shout and a heavy blow, and rushed in. Mr. Johnson lay on the ground, his skull beaten in with a blow from the iron-bound staff of a dervish, a wild figure with long hair and beard reaching down to his waist. Dick was in time to see the terrible staff descend again upon Ned's head. Ned guarded it with his rifle, but the guard was beaten down and Ned stretched senseless ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... let us say you may, need my aid. You will learn where and how to find the Sheikh Burrachee—which is my real name—from Yusuff, the sword dealer, in the armourers' bazaar, at Cairo. But you will more certainly do so by applying to the head Dervish at the mosques of Suakim, Berber, or Khartoum. At the last town, indeed, you will have no difficulty in learning where I am, and being conducted to me; and, indeed, in any considerable place above the second cataract of the Nile, you will probably ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... replied the Sheikh; "only two that will be smaller; but everything necessary for their Excellencies' comfort will be done. It will be right, and impress the Baggara and others of the Mahdi's followers. For the Hakim is not a poor dervish who tries to cure; he is a great Frankish doctor who travels to do good. He does not treat the sick and wounded to be paid in piastres, or to receive gifts, but because he loves to ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... great gift of all;—but at any rate to see no matter by what light, so only we can see things as they are. On my word, we should soon make it a different world, if we could get but a little—ever so little—of the dervish's ointment in the Arabian Nights, not to show us the treasures of the earth, but the facts ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... needs must reconcile Ambition to the life on ground, Still, I can profit by late found But precious knowledge. Mind is best— I will seize mind, forego the rest, And try how far my tethered strength May crawl in this poor breadth and length. Let me, since I can fly no more, At least spin dervish-like about (Till giddy rapture almost doubt I fly) through circling sciences, Philosophies and histories Should the whirl slacken there, then verse, Fining to music, shall asperse Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain Intoxicate, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... it penetrated the soul without neglecting the body, or rather it so well grasped exterior details that at once it pierced beyond. It gave me the power of living the life of the individual in whom it was exercised, enabling me to put myself in his skin, just at the dervish of the Arabian Nights entered the body and soul of those over whom he pronounced ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... the apparent defences of the town, they demanded clamorously to be led to the assault. Napoleon consented. Kleber, who was of gigantic stature, with a head of hair worthy of a German music-master or of a Soudan dervish, led his grenadiers to the edge of the breach and stood there, while with gesture and voice—a voice audible even above the fierce and sustained crackle of the musketry—he urged his men on. Napoleon, standing ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... General Hunter, with two battalions of troops, was marching along the banks of the River Atbara to hunt for Osman and his followers, but there was much speculation as to whether five-and-twenty dervish raiders were still this side of the river, and drawing their water from the wells on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... of Tartary, making a journey with his nobles, was met by a dervish, who cried with a loud voice: 'If any one will give me a piece of gold I will give him a piece of advice.' The Khan ordered the sum to be given him, upon which the dervish said, 'Begin nothing of which thou hast not well considered ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... something went wrong with Haig. Just what happened none could be quite sure of, then or afterward; but in the midst of Sunnysides' plungings, there came a windmill kind of movement, rather like the whirling of a dervish, out of which the horse lunged swiftly forward, and halted violently, with his head down, and his forelegs stiff before him. It was apparently an elaboration of one of the commonest tricks of all; and ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... Abbas on the Nile, Mahommed Ahmed, a dervish or holy man, from Dongola, proclaimed to the people of Egypt and of the Soudan that he was a prophet sent from heaven to save them from ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang

... is a younger or a jollier-feeling fellow in the room than I am, though I may not conduct myself like a dancing dervish. But I own you may be right about the books, for there are many sorts of intemperance, and a library is as irresistible to me as a barroom to a toper. I shall have to sign a pledge and cork up the only bottle ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... the ancients, 'Leave travel, though but for a mile.'" Then quoth he to his son, "Say, art thou indeed resolved to travel and wilt thou not turn back from it?" Quoth the other, "There is no help for it but that I journey to Baghdad with merchandise, else will I doff clothes and don dervish gear and fare a-wandering over the world." Shams al-Din rejoined, "I am no penniless pauper but have great plenty of wealth;" then he showed him all he owned of monies and stuffs and stock-in-trade and observed, "With me are stuffs ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... half paralyzed Ulema was there among them, the dervish Mohammed, and he it was who at ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... many analogous stories, one of which is the well-known tale of the merchant who, before going on a journey, deposited with a dervish 1,000 sequins, which he thought it prudent to reserve in case of accidents. When he returned and requested his deposit, the dervish flatly denied that he ever had any of his money. Upon this the merchant went and laid his case before the kazi, who advised ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... Orientals in general, he disliked pomp, and shrank from the ceremony which awaited him. His restless, intriguing, and imaginative spirit revelled in the incognito. He was perpetually in masquerade; a merchant, a Mamlouk, a soldier of fortune, a Tartar messenger, sometimes a pilgrim, sometimes a dervish, always in pursuit of some improbable but ingenious object, or lost in the mazes of some fantastic plot. He enjoyed moving alone without a single attendant; and seldom in his mountains, he was perpetually ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... wonder, from the grievous assaults made upon it last night, Nicholas," observed Sir Ralph. "Perhaps you are not aware that your crowning act was whisking wildly round the room by yourself, like a frantic dervish." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Saint Anthony of Padua to Christ's childhood; Saint Bernard to his humanity; Saint Teresa to Saint Joseph, etc. The Shi-ite Mohammedans venerate Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, instead of Abu-bekr, his brother-in-law. Vambery describes a dervish whom he met in Persia, "who had solemnly vowed, thirty years before, that he would never employ his organs of speech otherwise but in uttering, everlastingly, the name of his favorite, Ali, Ali. He thus wished to signify to the world ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... hard-headed bay gelding that was game to go all day, totally unaffected by shell-fire, but exceedingly stubborn about choosing the direction in which he went. After numerous changes I came across an excellent syce to look after them. He was a wild, unkempt figure, with a long black beard—a dervish by profession, and certainly gave no one any reason to believe that he was more than half-witted. Indeed, almost all dervishes are in a greater or less degree insane; it is probably due to that that they ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... the shades below, and the author of the "Pascal Chronicles" mentions that Nimrod taught the Assyrians or Babylonians to worship fire. The priests of Ammon, named Petor or Pator, used to dance round a large fire, which they affected in their dancing to describe. Probably from this the Dervish dances all over the East may be traced to ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... torch-bearers, who ran before the carriage and preceded the donkeys, after we adopted that humbler mode of locomotion. Our row across the river to the chant of the boatmen invoking the aid of a sainted dervish, and our ride through the fertile borders of the Nile, covered with crops and palm-trees, were very lovely, and, after about an hour and a half from Cairo, we emerged upon the Desert. The Pyramids seemed then almost within reach of our ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... frenzy of excitement, was a spotted coach-dog—the truck squad's mascot. Blount was within a few feet of the farther sidewalk, and was well out of danger when the long truck slewed into the avenue. But at the passing instant the mascot dog, leaping and whirling like a four-footed dervish, sprang backward. Blount felt the catapulting shock of a yielding body between his shoulders, heard a yell from the truck-driver on his high seat, and went plunging headlong to the curb. After which he felt and heard ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... talking about he said to Helen Travers: "I wonder what has become of that little dancing dervish up in Canada? She wasn't plain, ordinary stuff, but I suppose she'll be knocked into shape. Maybe that half-breed, Jerry-Jo, will get her when she's been reduced to his level. There are not girls enough to go around up there, I fancy. That little thing, though, was too spiritual ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... and success. 'The Rose of Persia' (1900), if not upon the level of his early masterpieces, contained better music than he had written since the days of 'The Gondoliers,' and at least one number—the marvellous Dervish quartet—that for sheer invention and musicianship could hardly be matched even in 'The Mikado' itself. There was a great deal of charming music, too, in 'The Emerald Isle' (1901), which Sullivan left unfinished at his death, and Mr. ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... native Egyptian army was, as yet, in the earliest stage of organization; and could not be relied upon to stand firm against the wild rush of the Dervishes. Fortunately, time was given for that organization to be completed; and when, at last, the Dervish forces marched north, they were repulsed. Assouan was saved, and Wady Halfa became the ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... and short old female of the coster-monger class, who, after a series of wild gyrations that might have put a dancing dervish to shame, bore down on Ned after the manner of a fat teetotum, and finally launched herself into ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... not sane, you know—it's the intoxication of the Corybant! It isn't the man himself we want to fix our eyes upon. He felt these things, no doubt: but we mustn't worship his raptures—we must worship what he worshipped. This sort of besotted agitation is little better than a dancing dervish. The poems are little sparks, struck out from a scrap of humanity by some prodigious and glorious force: but we must worship the force, not the spark: the spark is only an evidence, a system, a symbol if you like, of the force. And then see how utterly the man has lost all ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... essence of the successful "spectacle." Just as the scarlet dervish whirl was at its height the character of the music changed, slackened, softened, died from the angrily sensuous into an ethereal delicacy. The stage filled with clouds that faded in golden light, and a huge and glittering stairway rose towards the painted sky. On either ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... usually some Dervish pedlar or merchant trading with the tribes of the Soudan, who slips into Wadi Halfa or Assouan or Suakin and undertakes the work. Of course his risk is great. He would have short shrift in Omdurman if his business were detected. So it is not to be ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... repeated the saying to his men, and they replied: "Ebn-Hanife was a Dervish: so is ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... was really the cause of all his trouble, he whirled like a dervish across the second track in the wake of the express, and stumbling, went to his knees between that set of rails and the third track, on which the freight train was ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... be to God," said Dicky; "but if I had, her soul would be saved before my own, or I'm a dervish!" Then something moved him further, and he unbuttoned his pocket—for there really was a button to Dicky's pocket. He drew out a five-piastre piece, and held it down to the young Arab. "For the home-coming after Mecca," he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... transports with about the same amount of interest which she would have bestowed upon a whirling dervish at ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... him, "Glad you're here, sir. I can report. Ah, what was it you came for? Impatient to hear if I'd had any results?" My mind was spinning like a whirling dervish in a revolving door. I'd spent a wad of his money and had nothing I could think of to show for it; nothing but the last stages of a ...
— Unborn Tomorrow • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... their shots were thrown away. Several of the dervishes had fallen, but the process of clearing away the hedge proceeded with alarming rapidity. The work was, however, speedily abandoned at the face where Edgar was stationed, for at each crack of his rifle a dervish fell. Leaving three of the men to defend that face the rest joined the defenders at the sides, the sheik taking the command on one side, Edgar on the other. The fire now became more steady, the sheik enforcing his orders by vigorous blows ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty



Words linked to "Dervish" :   whirler, faqir, fakeer, faquir, fakir



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