a name given to all Mahommedan monks, though of various orders. The most noted among them are the Bektashi, the Mevelevi, the Kadri, and the Seyah. The Bektashi, who are allowed to marry and live in cities and towns, are obliged, by the rules of their order, to visit remote lands, and to salute every one they meet with gazels, or love-songs, and with salaam, or the invocation of the names of God, and humbly to wish him prosperity, which they do by repeating the word eivallah, a solemn exclamation of the wrestlers, by which the conquered yields the palm to the conqueror. The Mevelevi, so called from Mevela their founder, are used to turn round for two or three hours together, with such swiftness that you cannot see their faces; they are great lovers of music: in their monasteries they profess great humility and poverty, and when visited make no distinction of persons; they first bring their guests coffee to drink; and if the ways have been dirty, they wash their feet and sandals.

The Kadri, with a peculiar superstition, emaciate their bodies; they go quite naked, except their thighs, and often join hands and dance, sometimes a whole day, repeating with great vehemence, hu! hu! hu! (one of the names of God) till, like madmen, they fall on the ground, foaming at the mouth, and running down with sweat: the prime vizir Kupruli Ahmed Pasha, thinking this fact unbecoming the Mahommedan religion, ordered it to be suppressed; but, after his death, it revived, and is at present more numerous than ever, especially at Constantinople. The Seyah are wanderers, and though they have monasteries, yet they often spend their whole life in travelling; when they are sent out, their superiors impose upon them such a quantity of money or provisions, forbidding them to come back till they have procured it, and sent it to the monastery; wherefore when a Seyah comes into a town, he cries aloud in the market-place, Ya Allah senden, &c. O God! give me, I pray, five thousand crowns, or a thousand measures of rice. Many of these dervishes travel over the whole Mahommedan world, entertaining the people wherever they come, with agreeable relations of all the curiosities they have met with. There are dervishes in Egypt, who live with their families, and exercise their trades, of which kind are the dancing dervishes at Damascus. They are all distinguished among themselves by the different forms and colours of their habits; those of Persia wear blue; the solitaries and wanderers wear only rags of different colours; others carry on their heads a plume made of the feathers of a cock; and those of Egypt wear an octagonal badge of a greenish white alabaster at their girdles, and a high stiff cap, without any thing round it.