Arabic word, signifying "poor," which is employed to denote a kind of religious mendicant very common in India. In this sense it is synonymous with the Persian and Turkish dervise. A certain class of these mendicants live in communities like the monks of the Western world, while others live singly as hermits, or wander about making strange displays of self-torture and mortification. Although from time immemorial asceticism has been held in high veneration in the East, and it was deemed meritorious to retire from the world, to renounce the comforts of the domestic and social relations, and to live in poverty, solitude, and religious contemplation, the original principles of Mohammedanism were unfavourable to a monastic life. Religious mendicants did not appear among the Mussulmans till six centuries after Mohammed, in the thirteenth century of the Christian era. But there is reason to believe that they existed among the Hindus at a much earlier period. From the first they appear to have been distinguished by their ragged and filthy dress, and the severity of their self-inflicted penances. A celebrated member of their order, who flourished about the close of the twelfth century, says that the exterior of those devoted to a religious life should be a ragged dress and ill-combed hair; and a later writer affirms that a member of this mendicant order should have ten of the qualities proper to the dog,—to be always hungry—to have no fixed residence—to watch during the night—to leave no heritage after his death—not to abandon his master although ill treated by him—to content himself with the lowest place, and to yield his seat to any one who wants it—to return to the person who has beaten him when offered a morsel of bread—to keep at a distance when one is bringing him something to eat—and not to think of returning to the place he has quitted while following his master. Jami, the well-known Persian poet, in the introduction to his work on the lives of the Sufis or Mohammedan mystics, divides those who seek the future into three classes,—the Zaidids, who, full of faith, look down with contempt upon the life on earth, which they consider as imperfect and miserable; the Fakirs, who renounce the world in the belief that their minds will by poverty be rendered fitter for the exercise of virtue, and that they will hereafter be compensated for present privations; and the Abids, who hope to merit future reward by entirely devoting themselves to religious exercises. Among the Turks several orders of fakirs or dervishes exist. The chief of these is the order of the Maulavis, founded about the close of the thirteenth century by the Persian poet Jalaluddin Rumi. They have a great monastery at Galata and another at Iconium, and have also convents in nearly all Mohammedan countries. Mendicants of this order are notorious for their fondness of intoxicating liquors and of opium, and are addicted to the practice of sorcery, conjurations, and tricks of legerdemain. They may leave their order, and are then released from their vows of celibacy, and are permitted to marry. The order of the Rufuis are celebrated for their strange excesses of self-mortification. Fakir.

In their weekly meetings some of their number are always selected to hold a red-hot piece of iron between their teeth till it becomes cold, while the others make deep incisions in their bodies with sharp-edged instruments. A third class, termed the Calenders, are distinguished by the singularity of their dress. They sometimes wear a tiger's or a sheep's skin, sometimes garments made of party-coloured clothes, and not unfrequently go about half naked with their skin painted red or black, feathers in their ears, fancifully-shaped turbans or hats on their heads, a stick or a hatchet, or sometimes a drawn sword, in their hands, and in their girdles a plate or bowl, which they hold out to receive alms. In this guise they visit coffee-houses and other places of public resort to preach and to beg.

The Hindu fakirs go entirely naked, carrying on their shoulders a thick club, the end of which is wound round with rags of cloth of all colours. They strew their hair, which hangs half way down their back, with ashes, with which they sometimes besmear their whole bodies. Stavorinus says they generally take up their abode in shady places, either in the open air or in old and ruined buildings, without using anything to repose on or to cover themselves. All classes of these mendicants endeavour to gain the veneration of the people by the infliction of absurd and cruel penances and tortures. Stavorinus says he met with some who, by holding an arm raised in one position for many years, had lost the power of lowering it again. Others had bent their bodies forward till they had grown so crooked that they formed a right angle. Some, by continually bending the head backward, could not bring it back to its natural position. Others keep the hands clasped together so long, that the nails grow into the flesh, and come out on the other side. Tavernier mentions that some of these fakirs never sit or lie down to sleep, but are supported by a rope hung down for that purpose. Others lay fire on their heads, and burn their scalps to the very bone. Others roll themselves naked on thorns. Some bury themselves in a pit or ditch for nine or ten days, without tasting food or drink. A recent traveller in India states that he saw a fakir who was never "known" to eat at all. He carried a small black stone about with him, which had been presented to his mother by a holy man. He pretended that by sucking this stone, and without the aid of any sort of nutriment, he had arrived at the mature age of forty in a state of obesity which did great credit to the fattening powers of the black stone. Oddly enough, his business was to solicit offerings of rice, milk, fish, and ghee, for the benefit of his patron, Devi. These offerings were nightly laid upon the altar before Devi, who was supposed to absorb them during the night, considerably leaving the fragments to be distributed among the poor of the parish. Sometimes, this writer adds, a fakir will take it into his head to trundle himself along like a cart wheel for a couple of hundred miles or so. He ties his wrists to his ankles; gets a tire, composed of chopped straw, mud, and cowdung, laid along the ridge of his backbone; a bamboo staff passed through the angle formed by his knees and elbows by way of axle, and off he goes; a brazen cup, with a bag, and a hubble-bubble hang like tassels at the two extremities of the axle. Thus accoutred, he often starts on a journey which will occupy him for several years. On arriving in the vicinity of a village, the whole population turn out to meet and escort him with due honours to the public well or tank, where he unbends and washes off the dust and dirt acquired by perambulating several miles of dusty road. After ascertaining, by minute inquiries, the state of the larders of the assembled villagers, he takes up his quarters with the man who is best able to entertain him. When the supplies begin to fail he ties his hands to his heels again, gets a fresh tire put on, and is escorted out of the village with the same formalities as accompanied his entrance. Some of these mendicants are undoubtedly insane, but the greater part of them are impostors and hypocrites, who secretly indulge in the grossest licentiousness while they assume a sanctimonious air in order to obtain a pretext for idleness and for preying on the ignorant and superstitious natives. D'Herbelot estimated that there were 800,000 Mohammedan, and 1,200,000 Hindu, fakirs in India.

(D'Herbelot's Bibliothèque Orientale; Tavernier's Travels; Stavorinus' Voyage to the East Indies; Household Words, vol. iii., p. 310.)