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Dervis   Listen
noun
Dervis, Dervise, Dervish  n.  
1.
A Turkish or Persian monk, especially one who professes extreme poverty and leads an austere life.
2.
One of the fanatical followers of the Mahdi, in the Sudan, in the 1880's.
3.
In modern times, a member of an ascetic Muslim sect notable for its devotional exercises, which include energetic chanting or shouting and rhythmic bodily movement, such as whirling, leading to a trance-like state or ecstasy. From these exercises the phrase whirling dervish is derived.
4.
Figuratively, a person who whirls or engages in frenzied activity reminiscent of the dervish (3) dancing.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dervis" Quotes from Famous Books



... quoted from some MSS. notes on The Nights by Mr. W. A. Clouston, which Sir R. F. Burton kindly permitted me to inspect. Mr. Clouston then quotes Cazotte's Preface (not in my edition of the Thousand and One Days), according to which the book was written by the celebrated Dervis Mocles (Mukhlis), chief of the Sofis (Sufis?) of lspahan, founded upon certain Indian comedies. Petis de la Croix was on friendly terms with Mukhlis, who allowed him to take a copy of his work in 1675, during ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

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

... not 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

... batushka (priest) was announced. He was a powerfully built man, displaying a physique of which a Roman gladiator might have been proud. His grizzled beard reached down to his waist, and his flowing black robes gave him the appearance of a dervish. Alexei enjoyed the reputation of being very devout, and the cloister of which he was the head was known as the most thoroughly religious in the Empire. To this man the future of the Jewish lad was ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... games have done for women what the dervish's subtle prescription did for the sick sultan. You perhaps remember the story. The sultan, having very bad health from over-feeding, sedentary habits, and luxurious ease, consulted the clever dervish. The dervish ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers

... 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 have become dervishes, for the native regards the insane as under the protection of God. Dervishes ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... Sullivan's collaboration with Captain Basil Hood brought him an Indian summer of inspiration 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

... sufficient men to bury the vast mass of dead Dervishes till several years after—this might be put down as the commonplace of picturesque prophecy. It was, however, a distinctly good hit on the prophet's part to suggest that the Dervish rule would literally be swallowed up by the casualties in one great battle at the point indicated. That was exactly what happened. I remember well, years after the prophecy, reading in the account of the special correspondents that the field of Omdurman some few ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... and in the other stream bed, certainly and without hazard, you could dig up little caskets, containing talismans which gave length of days and peace; and alabaster vases of precious balms, which were better than the Arabian Dervish's ointment, and made not only the eyes to see, but the mind to know, whatever it would—I wonder in which of the stream beds there would ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin

... were being raised from a deep well. Usually, they are men of extraordinary power, and are worth any dozen of that individual who scuttles about like a water bug, making an exhibition of great energy but, like the whirling dervish, keeping in such constant motion that he has no chance to observe what goes on under his nose. Here, as in all things, it is steadiness that does it. The blunt soldier, the old sea-dog type of naval officer, ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... Priest. Mr. G. H. Damant (pp. 357-360 of the "Indian Antiquary" of 1873) relates the "Tale of the Touchstone," a legend of Dinahpur, wherein a woman "sells" her four admirers. In the Persian Tales ascribed to the Dervish "Mokles" (Mukhlis) of Isfahan, the lady Aruya tricks and exposes a Kazi, a doctor and a governor. Boccaccio (viii. 1) has the story of a lady who shut up her gallant in a chest with her husband's sanction; and a similar tale (ix. 1) of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... word had he exchanged with his partner during the promenade, and his genuine listlessness was even more offensive than affected apathy. Von Sohnspeer, on the contrary, danced in the true Vienna style, and whirled like a Dervish. All our good English prejudices against the soft, the swimming, the sentimental, melting, undulating, dangerous waltz would quickly disappear, if we only executed the dreaded manoeuvres in the true Austrian style. ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... the greater part of 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 ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... manner 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

... island of 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

... THE PRINCE. The dervish calls all life a pilgrimage, And that, a brief one. True!—Of two short spans This side of earth to two short spans below. I will recline upon the middle path. The man who bears his head erect today No later than tomorrow on his breast Bows it, all tremulous. Another ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... stopped to look, a dervish, leading a fine lion by a chain, and some runners with curious hats and coats rushed ...
— The Cat and the Mouse - A Book of Persian Fairy Tales • Hartwell James

... the story of a young enamoured Dervish who knew the whole Koran by heart, but forgot his very alphabet in presence of the princess. She tried to encourage him, but he only found tongue to say, "It is strange that with thee present I should have speech ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... with the dervish-like whirling of the dancers. The fiddle rose louder and shriller, faster and faster. The men sang at the tops of their voices, and beat time heavily. Under cover of this rolling clamor, Vincent called out boldly to Marise, ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... her gracious good-humour, so untameable her high spirits, that it was only by remembering the little spitfire of twelve or fourteen years ago that it was credible that she had a temper at all; the temper erst wont to exhale in chamois bounds and dervish pirouettes, had apparently left not a trace behind, and the sullen ungraciousness to those who offended her had become the sunniest sweetness, impossible to disturb. Was it real improvement? Concealment it was not, for Lucilla had always been transparently true. Was ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... we stay in our 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 all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he can not sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and, as ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... gloom. The star twinkled, trembled, and turned, at first with a slow, gyratory motion, then faster and faster, increasing its circumference at every rotation until it formed a brilliant disk, and we no longer saw the dwarf, who seemed absorbed in its light.... All being now ready, the dervish, without uttering a word, or removing his gaze from the disk, stretched out a hand, and taking hold of mine he drew me to his side, and pointed to the luminous shield. Looking at the place indicated, we saw large patches appear, like those of the moon. These gradually formed themselves ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... forces in Siberia and his chief bid for distinction was a noisy dislike for the Worker's & Peasants' Republic of Russia, and the I.W.W. which he termed the "American Bolsheviki". During the 1918 raid on the Centralia hall Grimm is said to have been dancing around "like a whirling dervish" and waving the American flag while the work of destruction was going on. Afterwards he became prominent in the American Legion and was the chief "cat's paw" for the lumber interests who were capitalizing the uniform to gain their own unholy ends. Personally he was a clean-cut modern ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin

... Kean found herself on a terrace at St. Cloud, spinning around like a dancing dervish. She, with her partner, danced down the whole wedding party; even the untiring street piano gave up, and their last spin was taken without music. The good-natured revelers applauded loudly; and some of them congratulated her on her powers of endurance; ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... 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 in Egypt, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... flushed with their triumph, and seeing how slight were 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 on a gun in the nearest French battery, watched the sight with ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... Hamadan, plodding our way through little tramped-down paths, with snow three feet deep on either side. By way of being cheerful we went to see two tombs. One was an old, old place, where slept "the first great physician" who ever lived. In it a dervish kept watch in the bitter cold, and some slabs of dung kept a smouldering fire not burning but smoking. These dervishes have been carrying messages for Germans. Mysterious, like all religious men, they travel through the country and distribute their whispers and messages. ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... 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 ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... min-ha '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 for 'Mil'akat') ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... something in her ear. There was a suppressed annoyance in Eveena's look which provoked me to interpose. On Earth I should never have been fool enough to meddle in a woman's quarrel. The weakest can take her own part in the warfare of taunt and innuendo, better and more venomously than could dervish, priest, or politician. But Eveena could no more lower herself to the ordinary level of feminine malice than I could have borne to hear her do so; and it was intolerable that one whose sweet humility commanded respect from myself should submit to slight or sneer from the lips and eyes of petulant ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... threatened to triumph over all obstacles. Ali immediately ordered a sortie of all his troops, announcing that he himself would conduct it. His master of the horse brought him the famous Arab charger called the Dervish, his chief huntsman presented him with his guns, weapons still famous in Epirus, where they figure in the ballads of the Skipetars. The first was an enormous gun, of Versailles manufacture, formerly presented by the conqueror ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... 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

... (vulg. baz) a kettle-drum about half a foot broad held in the left hand and beaten with a stick or leathern thong. Lane refers to his description (M.E. ii. chapt. v.) of the Dervish's drum of tinned copper with parchment face, and renders Zakhmah or Zukhmah (strap, stirrup-leather) by "plectrum," which gives a wrong idea. The ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... spirits, it is well; the power of God be with thee; but if thou art a man, then let mine eyes light upon thee, that I may rejoice in thy presence and society." Scarcely had he spoken these words, before an aged man, with bald head, stood before him, holding a staff In his hand, and much resembling a dervish in appearance. After having courteously saluted him, Fadhilah asked the old man who he was. Thereupon the stranger answered, "Bassi Hadhret Issa, I am here by command of the Lord Jesus, who has left me in this world, that I may live therein until he come a second time to earth. I wait for this ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... useless—he is gone. Bah! She snaps her fingers. What does she care! She will dance to please herself, and to show that her heart is yet whole. What a Bacchanalian strain. She whirls and springs and swoops and leaps. She comes near to me, whirling like a Dervish; she recedes, and then comes spinning round again, like a mad creature. And then—oh, hang it! What do you mean? ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... 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 ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... scholarly fellows who chanted the "Odyssey," and both oath-ripping and taciturn, quiet-mannered fellows who could neither read nor write found a home in the African Braves' muster-roll. Their spirit of corps had a dervish fatalism. They had begged to have a share in the war and Partow had consented. In the night after their long journey, while Westerling's ram was getting its death-blow, they had detrained and started for the front. But the Grays were going as fast as the Braves, and they had been ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... before the liner sails; that worrying, waving, whooping, whistling quarter of an hour through which you stand on deck like a human centre-piece loaded with candy, fruit, and flowers, surrounded by a phantasmagoria of friendly faces, talking like a dancing-man and feeling like a dancing dervish. Small wonder that the deafening whistle-blast and cry of "All ashore!" smite sweetly on your ears. Small wonder that you hand a dollar to your sister and kiss the porter who has brought ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street

... fact, the member for England is often intoxicate. Often do we have him whirling his rotundity like a Mussulman dervish inflated by the spirit to agitate the shanks, until pangs of a commercial crisis awaken him to perceive an infructuous past and an unsown future, without one bit of tracery on its black breast other than that which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... strong, sometimes she thought him coarse and raw. He talked the jargon of the agitator with the enthusiasm of a dervish and the vernacular of the mine and the shop and the forge. But in him she could see the fire of a ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... 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 scarcely follow their ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... as he ran, of an old crone, crazed by excitement, whirling like a dervish, rocking her skinny arms and twisting her neck into attitudes as ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... as any, and the first watch held a record for hauling yards and changing sheets. "'Ere ye are, boys," was the call at eight bells. "Out ye comes, an' swigs them b——y yards round; windmill tatties, an' th' Old Man 'owlin' like a dancin' —— dervish on th' lid!" The Old Man had been at the bottle, and was more than usually quarrelsome; two men were sent from the wheel for daring to spit over the quarter, and M'Kellar was on a verge of tears at some coarse-worded ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... 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 ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... himself up to the condition of feeling sorry for her as she discharged her painful duties (while admiring her loveliness), was a sort of camp-meeting madman. He was an advanced kind of religious fanatic, nearly in the foaming stages, something like a whirling dervish. His emotional gibberings were beneath the notice of ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... 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

... compliment to Paradise. Or did he simply use a pious, impressive form of speech to awe the spectators, and give them the notion that he had as much traffic with God as any African mystery-man or Mohammedan dervish? ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... inside and found an opening. Some papers rustled in my hand. I clutched them like a madman, violently drew them forth and, perceiving that they were the precious documents, waved them about like a dancing dervish. The soldiers were distinctly disappointed and cast an evil eye on Marie, as though holding her personally responsible for cheating them out of a little ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... God's work, and no man can improve upon it. There have been, he admits, revolutions in the moral as well as the physical world; and inspired reformers, who were born to carry them on; but these men are rare and portentous as the physical agencies to which they correspond, and whether "dervish (desert-spectre), swordsman, saint, lawgiver," or "lyrist," appear only when the time is ripe for them. Meanwhile, the great machine advances by means of the minute springs, the revolving wheel-work, of individual lives. Let each of these be content ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... expression of a 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 we reflect upon the force of suggestion for uncritical ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell

... acknowledged by the whole people, they were utterly unable to state from whence she had come to Tunis and whither she had now fled. When at last they began to threaten the prisoners as obstinate, an old Dervish, hitherto unnoticed, pressed forward and said, with a gloomy smile, "Whoever has a desire to seek the lady may set out when he chooses; I will conceal nothing from him of what I know of her direction, ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque

... Mohammedans. Its leading cities, Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand, have for many centuries been centres of bigotry. For ages Turkestan remained a land of mystery. No European was sure for a moment of life if he ventured to cross its borders. Vambery, the traveller, penetrated it disguised as a dervish, after years of study of the language and habits of the Mohammedans, yet he barely escaped with life. It is pleasant to be able to say that this state of affairs has ceased. Russia has curbed the violence of the fanatics ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

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

... angry with his drudge, Beating him, called him hunchback; to the hind Thus spake a dervish: 'Friend, the Eternal Judge Dooms not his work, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... quite a sensation), when for the first time, and seated comfortably upon the soft turf by the river side, she gracefully threw her line into the great Gour of Akin; the bait had scarcely sunk, when the float was dancing about like a dervish, and finally disappeared; the lady pulled, the fish resisted; excited beyond measure, she redoubled her efforts, and tugging away with both hands, at length drew from his watery home a large carp, which flying through the air, described a splendid parabola, and landed ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... 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

... roller; flywheel; jack; caster; centrifuge, ultracentrifuge, bench centrifuge, refrigerated centrifuge, gas centrifuge, microfuge; drill, augur, oil rig; wagon wheel, wheel, tire, tyre [Brit.]. [Science of rotary motion] trochilics^. [person who rotates] whirling dervish. V. rotate; roll along; revolve, spin; turn round; circumvolve^; circulate; gyre, gyrate, wheel, whirl, pirouette; twirl, trundle, troll, bowl. roll up, furl; wallow, welter; box the compass; spin like a top, spin like a teetotum^. [of an automobile] spin out. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... herself in the 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," he said in secret. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... report issued early in 1920 with reference to the successful termination of the Somaliland campaign through the intervention of the Royal Air Force, which between January 21st and the 31st practically destroyed the Dervish force under the Mullah, which had been a thorn in the side of Britain since 1907. Bombs and machine-guns did the work, destroying fortifications and bringing about the surrender of all the Mullah's following, with the exception of about seventy ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... producing perceptible repercussions in our circulatory, breathing and balancing apparatus: a waltz, or a dive or a gallop may indeed be highly exciting, thanks to its resultant organic perturbations and its concomitants of overcome difficulty and danger, but even a dancing dervish's intoxicating rotations cannot afford him much of the specific interest of movement as movement. Yet every movement which we accomplish implies a change in our debit and credit of vital economy, a change ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee

... body, or rather it seized so completely the external details that it went beyond them. It gave me the faculty of living the life of the individual over whom it obtained control, and allowed me to substitute myself for him like the dervish in Arabian Nights assumed the soul and the body of persons over whom he pronounced certain words." And he adds, after describing how he followed a workman and his wife along the street: "I could ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... Abd-ul-Mejid, nearly ruined him, and the consequence is, that the present sovereign has wisely concluded to fall back upon some of the older fashions of his people. Mahmoud thought to drive away the remembrance of the Dervish-Janissaries whose violences seldom allowed a Sultan to die of disease, and never of old age. To effect this, he disbanded their several corps, and created new ones, in another dress. Perhaps this was wise at the time, but the object once reached, he might—or his successor, at most—have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... 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 on the ground. Before the fakir had time to raise ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... him; he'll lick him sure. See that lunge? My, what a shaking he gave him that time!" George was a dancing Dervish by this time. Then noticing the guns for the first time, seized one ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... flourishing an imaginary whip and egging on the rest to wilder exertions. A climax is reached when Drinkwater, let loose without a stain on his character for the second time, is rapt by belief in his star into an ecstasy in which, scorning all partnership, he becomes as it were a whirling dervish, and executes so miraculous a clog dance that the others gradually cease their slower antics ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw

... John's or St. Vitus's dance. And long before its first appearance in that precise form, in 1374, it had, no doubt, been the real secret of the bacchanalian orgies among the Greeks, and of the frantic, dervish-like gestures and cuttings with knives and lancets which we read of among Asiatic races. In our own day and country (thank God) these extraordinary and degrading spectacles are scarcely to ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... feeble! Such is not the work that wise masters confide to fierce slaves. But that is the least of the reasons which exclude them from my choice, and fix my choice of assistant on you. Do you forget what I told you of the danger which the Dervish declared no bribe I could offer could tempt him ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... The dervish Hadji Omar was driven by his enemies out of Mocha into the desert, where they expected he would die of starvation. This undoubtedly would have occurred if he had not plucked up courage to taste some strange berries which he found growing on a shrub. While they seemed to be edible, they ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... mornings ago he awoke to find that in a deep sleep some ministrant had come to him, and opened the doors of his heart, and let out its flock of boyish fantasies. He has since known but three visions. Would it please you, O Princess, to hear of them? They may be useful as threads on which to hang the Dervish father's pearls of saying." ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... we might have dispensed with the 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 outstretched arms, but lo! they were in fact ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... 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

... landlady, in propria persona, jumping and screaming and laughing, and snapping her fingers, and spinning round like a Turkish dervish, "mira el fandango, mira el fandangodexa me baylar, dexa me baylar—See my fandango, see my fandangolet me dance ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... the dark—that's the 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, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... scarlet elf locks: the suit of feathers itself is left entirely to the imagination; and the heavenly dance is a series of whirls, stamps, and jumps, accompanied by unearthly yells and shrieks; while the vanishing into thin air is represented by pirouettes something like the motion of a dancing dervish. The intoning of the recitative is unnatural and unintelligible, so much so that not even a highly educated Japanese could understand what is going on unless he were previously acquainted with the piece. This, however, is supposing ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... honour the feast with his presence; he could scarcely endure to see the princess in the arms of Prince Ali, who, he said, did not deserve her better or love her more than himself. He left the court, and, renouncing all right of succession to the crown, turned dervish, and put himself under the discipline of a famous sheik, who had gained a reputation for his exemplary life, and had taken up his abode, together with his disciples, whose number was great, ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon

... Who says dervish says beggar, and who says beggar evokes the completest type of filth and laziness. But with what an extraordinary combination of gestures, with what attitudes in the management of the long-stringed guitar, with ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... "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 the tree is represented as growing out of ruins. This is in accordance ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... dramatic properties with which is invested each incident in the tale. The hero, a characteristic Persian adventurer, one part good fellow, and three parts knave, always the plaything of fortune—whether barber, water-carrier, pipe-seller, dervish, doctor's servant, sub-executioner, scribe and mollah, outcast, vender of pipe-sticks, Turkish merchant, or secretary to an ambassador—equally accepting her buffets and profiting by her caresses, never reluctant to lie or cheat or thieve, or get ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... baseball players found the girls impatiently awaiting them, and wondering rather petulantly what had become of them. Joe seized Mabel in his arms and whirled her about the room like a dancing dervish, paying no heed ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick

... 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 cure ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... feeling none too amiable, I set off along the indicated route. In Paris, rushing from the rue St.-Dominique to Cook's office, from that office to the hotel, from the hotel to the gare, I had been a sort of whirling dervish with no time for sober thought. My trip of four hours on a slow, stuffy, crowded train had, however, afforded me ample leisure; and I had spent the time in grimly envisaging the possibilities that, I decided, were ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... live a quieter life, the good man put on the robe of a dervish, and divided his house into a quantity of small cells, where he soon established a number of other dervishes. The fame of his virtue gradually spread abroad, and many people, including several of the highest quality, came to visit him and ask ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... movingly familiar: the rippling banks of color which rose on all sides to frame the long carpet of chalked turf; the clamorous outbursts of cheering when an eddy of Yale or Princeton undergraduates swirled and tossed at command of the dancing dervish of a leader at the edge of the field below; the bright, buoyant aspect of the multitude as viewed en masse. Seeley leaned against the railing of his lofty perch and gazed at this pageant until a sporting editor, long in harness, nudged ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... "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 ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... slept in an outhouse in order the better to delude the servants. He read the Koran sedulously, howled his prayers with a local shaykh who imparted to him the niceties of the faith, purified himself, made an ostentatious display of piety, and gave out that he was a hakim or doctor preparing to be a dervish. As he had some knowledge of medicine, this role was an easy one, and his keen sense of humour made the experience enjoyable enough. On the steamer that carried him to Cairo, he fraternized with two of his fellow-passengers, a Hindu named Khudabakhsh and an Alexandrian ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... shouting. Long curly hair waved over his face; his dress was hung round with corks and tassels; he swung a long life-line round his head, and screamed at me words which were of course utterly lost in the breeze. This dancing dervish was the "life saver," marine preserver, and general bore of the occasion, and he seemed unduly annoyed to see me profoundly deaf to his noise as I stood on the after-deck to get a wider view, holding on by the mizen-mast, steeling with my feet, and surveying the entrance with my glass. All ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... signify PEARLS, they signify CURSE OF ALA. But I no understand meaning, explanations, or signs. Must see the Dervish of Anghera—wise man and translate all. I take parchment to day and bring parchment to-morrow, and deceive not nor ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... quarter, died fighting. In every hut and trench the dervishes were hid, and slashed and fired at their enemy till bayoneted, or shot themselves. There were many hand-to-hand fights and many narrow escapes, but in forty minutes the firing was over and the dervish army scattered and annihilated. With the exception of Osman Digna, who with his usual luck escaped, and three others, all the important leaders were killed, and Mahmoud himself taken prisoner. He was found ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... well the exterior details that it straightway passed above and beyond them; it gave me the faculty of living the life of the individual on whom it was exerted, by permitting me to substitute myself for him, just as the dervish in the Thousand and One Nights took the body and soul of those persons over ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... have wiped upon a sheet in cases of emergency, and so I have upon a pair of socks; but there is no doubt that the proper thing is a towel. To dry oneself upon a sheet needs special training and unusual agility. A Nautch Girl or a Dancing Dervish would, no doubt, get through the performance with credit. They would twirl the sheet gracefully round their head, draw it lightly across their back, twist it in waving folds round their legs, wrap themselves for ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... the entrance; and on gaining the interior of the edifice, found the service had commenced. As each dervish entered, he saluted the chief priest; besides whom, there were five other priests, seated in various situations close to the railing. One, on the right of the entrance, held a book, from which he chanted certain verses in a monotonous ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo



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