On Sufi caravans

From the sacred courtyards of Bukhara to Egyptian Sufi khanaqas, from Balkan tekkiyas to the circles of Turkish dervishes, from the deserts of Morocco to the steppes of Turkestan and the ancient shrines of Iran, this book follows the author and her fellow caravaners through some of the most spiritually charged places on earth.

Along the way appear Naqshbandi Sufi Masters and Yasawi healers, wandering dervishes and Tanoura dancers, Bektashi sheikhs, Iranian mystics, the whirling dervishes of Konya, and many others whose paths crossed theirs for a moment — or forever.

Yet On Sufi Caravans is not a book about exotic travel.
It is the story of an inner journey — the one every caravaner walks when unexpected Guides step out of the unseen.




Copyright © 2026 AsSalam (pen name of Nina Sorokina) 
Author’s website: https://assalam786.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author. For inquiries about translations or publication rights, please contact: assalam.enneagon786@gmail.com



To Master Sufis we met on this Path,
Who shared their light and grace with us –
May your love never leave us.

To my fellow caravaners,
Brother and sister dervishes –
May we never tire in the search for Truth.

To the souls who hear the calling,
Who are waiting on the threshold -
May you always find the Way.


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FOREWORD


It has been a long time since I stopped searching for magicians in distant lands — those who might reveal great secrets or work wondrous transformations within me. I no longer seek magic outside myself, for I have learned that one must look for the Mystery within, and nowhere else. The teachers we meet along the way merely help us recognize what has always existed in the silence of our being.

And yet, for years I gathered companions for new caravans, and my Friends jokingly called me the “wandering dervish.” Why? Every pilgrimage, like any meaningful undertaking, must have seven reasons to succeed.

The first purpose is to expand the mind - it belongs to all travel, spiritual or not.

Another one concerns learning — my own, and that of the people who travel with us; however, speaking of it does not always help in achieving it.

Another reason has to do with the time and place. Certain regions of the earth at particular moments “call” to themselves a group of people who carry the kind of energy these places crave. When the alignment occurs, the group becomes witness to a chain of “miraculous” coincidences and “fortunate” circumstances. In our journeys, both happened unfailingly.

Yet another purpose concerns the sacred sites of the Tradition that we visit, and the subtle threads that bind them into a planetary network. For flowers not to vanish from the earth for lack of cross-pollination, bees must continue to seek them.

The next two purposes of our caravans concern both us and the people who receive us. We learn about them, and they learn about us, weaving between all of us a bond that is invisible yet entirely real. In this way, the communion of the Tradition is sustained.


But there is also a more profound reason — one that Rumi expressed long ago in his tale of the blind men and the elephant. Each man touched a different part of the animal and believed he had grasped the whole. Only by sharing their partial truths could they begin to sense the shape of the real.

So it is with the dervishes we meet. Each is different — as the chapters of this book will show. One teaches through silence, another through stories, a third through service or his presence alone. Yet beneath this diversity there is a unity so unmistakable that everyone who travels with us feels it. In our caravans, we explore different “parts” of the mysterious elephant that is Sufism.

And by doing so, we begin to touch the ungraspable — the essence of the Teaching, which cannot be spoken of, only recognized in the light of those who walk the Path.
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NOBLE BUKHARA



“Bukhara-i-Sharif” – “Noble Bukhara” - this is how this city is reverently called, in recognition of its unique role in the spiritual life of the peoples of Central Asia — and far beyond. As George Gurdjieff once said, “To understand the hidden essence of the Islamic teaching, there is no need to go to Mecca; one can find far more in Bukhara.” The role of a spiritual portal, which Mecca fulfilled in earlier times, did indeed shift to Bukhara at a certain moment in history, where it continued to function for centuries and, in a sense, continues to do so even today.

Of the three dozen countries and perhaps a couple hundred cities I have visited, Bukhara will forever remain a place apart. The imprint it leaves on the soul, the “fragrance” of Tradition that belongs to it alone, is incomparable — only the Turkish Konya, where the atmosphere of Rumi’s Sufi teaching and love is still alive today, can be placed beside it.

Like Konya, Bukhara remains a very local, intimate city — the kind you fall in love with from the very first step. Both cities seem almost unchanged since the Middle Ages. The spirit of Bukhara, nurtured by the sacred labours of generations upon generations of dervishes, captivates the pilgrim’s heart in the twenty;first century just as it did in the twelfth.

The spirit of Bukhara lives in its narrow streets, where the walls guard the relics of saints, as the small plaques here and there quietly attest. It is in the evening lights reflected in the black water of Lyabi;Hauz pond, in the soft wind that washes away the heat of the day like a blessing. It is in the character of the people — marked by dignity and warmth, yet without servility, pride, or insistence — truly noble, just like Bukhara;i;Sharif itself.


The historic centre of Bukhara is quite small and homelike — you can walk all of it in a single evening along the cobblestone streets still warm from the day, gazing at the various handmade Eastern curiosities that street vendors sell late into the night: beautiful embroidered suzani, skullcaps and shawls, magnificent metalwork, Persian miniatures, and daggers with carved handles.


Many of the patterns in traditional silk embroidery — suzani — have been used for thousands of years, and the art of creating them is passed from one craftswoman to another. Even the obvious deviations from symmetry or the “imperfections” in the ornament can carry meaning and convey important information to anyone who truly wishes to grasp the ancient knowledge woven into these designs by their creators.

Each element of the pattern has a sacred or magical significance, so a suzani is a genuine talisman, into which many months of meticulous work — and a fine, focused intention — have been poured.

We continue our walk through the streets of Bukhara… Along the way, one hardly encounters the grandiose monuments to leaders or generals that are so common in most cities. The only figure deemed worthy of a monument in the very heart of sacred Bukhara is the incomparable hero of dervish tales — Khoja Nasruddin on his famous donkey, around whom children are always playing. His right hand is placed on his chest, while his left holds a coin between two fingers, perhaps hinting that everything has two sides, and it is not always clear which one is the face…
Or perhaps, by showing the coin, Khoja is reminding us of this story.

Once at the bazaar, Nasruddin saw a fat teahouse owner shaking a beggar and demanding payment for a meal.

“But I only smelled your pilaf!” the wanderer protested.
“The smell also costs money!” the fat man retorted.
“Let him go — I will pay for everything,” Nasruddin intervened.
The teahouse owner released the poor man. Nasruddin took a few coins from his pocket and shook them beside the man’s ear.
“What is this?” the owner exclaimed in astonishment.
“He who sells the smell of a meal is paid with the sound of coins,” Nasruddin replied calmly.

This story, like Nasruddin’s coin, has two sides — the face and the reverse. Try to see them both. And meanwhile, let us continue along the sunlit streets of blessed Bukhara, past its mosques and madrasas.

Let us step into an ancient temple — once Zoroastrian, later transformed into the mausoleum of a Muslim saint — and ponder why the domes of the temples of Maverannahr were built with small circular openings at their centre. Was it to create a stream of cooling air, or so that the rays of the sun and stars, passing through the aperture, would fall directly onto the central altar?

…And we will end our walk at the medieval Mir;i;Arab madrasa, named after the Sufi from Yemen who was the spiritual guide of the ruler of Bukhara and the inspiration behind its construction. The uniqueness of Mir;i;Arab lies in the fact that it was the only madrasa that, by some miracle, survived in the USSR — the only centre of faith that did not go “underground” during those years. Anyone who understands what it means for a place to be “saturated with prayer” will recognize that Mir;i;Arab is exactly such a place.

The Naqshbandi dervishes, too, were forced under Soviet rule to conceal their affiliation with the order. Yet they never ceased their work and continued to gather in secret, so that even neighbours might have no idea that a Sufi Master lived next door.

The minaret of the Mir;i;Arab mosque, the tallest structure in sacred Bukhara
We were fortunate to meet one of them — a deeply respected man in Bukhara, who taught all his life at the Mir;i;Arab madrasa and in recent years has also served as the guardian of the Bahauddin Naqshband memorial.


HAJI ABDULGAFUR BUKHARI


When our Friend, the master of Bukharan miniature painting, learned that we were going to meet Haji Abdulgafur, he said: “You are about to visit the best calligrapher in Bukhara.” Our Uzbek guide, upon hearing whom we were going to see, added: “Ustaz Haji Abdulgafur is one of the most respected people in the city — a scholar, a leading teacher at the Mir;i;Arab madrasa, and the custodian of the Bahauddin Naqshband memorial.”

The respectful address ustaz (“elder, mentor”) in Uzbekistan is used for religious teachers, and the title Haji is placed before the names of those who have completed the pilgrimage — the hajj — to Mecca. The person who arranged this meeting for us described Haji Abdulgafur as a Naqshbandi Sufi and a folk healer.
One of our companions, as we drove to meet him, recalled having once read a book by Abdulgafur about Naqshbandi practices.

It was hard to believe that all of these descriptions could apply to a single person — yet they did. Our gracious host, Haji Abdulgafur Razzak Bukhari, was all of this, and much more… things that are difficult to convey in words, though I will try.

Haji Abdulgafur was born into a family with exceptionally strong spiritual traditions. His grandfather, a renowned coppersmith and Sufi, was sought out by all of Bukhara for advice and guidance. His grandmother, classically educated, knew by heart the poetry of Hafiz, Navoi, Bedil, and Fuzuli. Every week, the wisest people of Bukhara gathered in their home. According to Abdulgafur, their conversations about faith, sacred texts, calligraphy, history, their readings of Sufi poets, and their scholarly debates imprinted themselves on his memory from childhood. He brewed tea for the elders and carried out small errands.
Naturally, all these gatherings took place in secret. By their clothing, no one would have guessed that these men were Sufis.

Outwardly, Abdulgafur’s life unfolded like that of any of his contemporaries: regular school, work in a stone;carving workshop as a marble engraver, military service. But his admission to the Mir;i;Arab madrasa determined his destiny: for the next three decades and more, his life would be inseparable from spiritual seeking and, eventually, from guiding others.

…We are sitting over tea in the spacious reception room of Haji Abdulgafur’s home, admiring the beautiful calligraphic works on the walls and the old objects arranged on the shelves of a built;in cabinet: elegant copper coffee pots; vessels of mysterious purpose (perhaps the kind in which rebellious jinn were sealed with Solomon’s signet); oil lamps reminiscent of Aladdin’s lamp; Chinese porcelain vases; painted Uzbek bowls, and other curiosities.

Our host looks much younger than his years. He speaks Russian with us (as we later learned, it is one of the four or five languages he knows), carries himself with simplicity, and, seeing that we are a little unsure of how to begin, smiles and invites us to ask whatever questions we have.

Just like my companions, I have many questions, but somehow we cannot approach them so abruptly, and I apologize as I explain this to Haji. He doesn’t mind if we begin with general topics, since—whatever we talk about—the content itself is less important than the very fact of the conversation. Whatever is spoken aloud, the hearts are having their own dialogue anyway. What is transmitted beyond words is the essence of a Sufi conversation—suhbat—and it is precisely that which matters most.

We begin to talk—about the various objects on the shelves, about the qualities and subtle properties of the different materials they’re made of, about calligraphy and its many styles, and so on. Gradually we loosen up and approach the essence of the questions that brought us here.

Our conversation touched not only on me but also on my companions, and in many ways on practices that are of interest only on an individual level. Still, I will try to recount those parts of the conversation that, in my view, may be useful to everyone.

As a general message I received from Haji Abdulgafur, I remember his idea that excessive attachment to techniques can become a deviation from the straight path. When a certain centre, latifa, or capacity begins to develop—well, let it develop (here he waved his hand lightly, as if releasing something)—there is no need to inflate your ego with it. It is important to remember that all techniques are merely tools, and one must look beyond them—to the Source.

One of my questions concerned the feeling of bliss and physical pleasure—unlike any sensation I had known before—that almost always accompanies my meditations in recent years. It was important for me to know whether this might be an obstacle or a kind of “honeyed veil.”

Haji Abdulgafur replied that both sweetness and bitterness come from the One, and if one keeps this in mind during dhikr, joining the feeling of bliss with gratitude to the Giver of that bliss, it will not cause harm.

Another question I asked concerned a special experience of joy and direct communion with the essence of Bahauddin Naqshband, which happened in the saint’s mausoleum in Qasr;i;Arifan — something I wrote about in one of my earlier notes. I was curious what Haji Abdulgafur, as the keeper of the Bahauddin al;Shah memorial, would say about this experience: would he consider it merely a play of imagination, or something to be taken seriously?

He replied with complete seriousness that sacred places exist precisely so that such contact can be established, and that there was nothing unusual in what I experienced.

I also shared that after visiting the mausoleum I felt a very strong longing to maintain a connection with al;Shah, and I asked whether such an attraction to a single saint—even the greatest—might stand in the way of the ultimate Truth. Would I not be, in a sense, “ascribing a partner to God”? Haji Abdulgafur replied that he saw no problem in this, because every dervish who chooses a particular Sufi Path, or tariqa, approaches the Truth precisely by walking the path laid by the founder of that tariqa. For the Naqshbandi dervishes, the “door” is the essence of al;Shah. Rabita—establishing a special, intimate connection with the essence of the order’s founder—is even necessary.

I asked how I could maintain this connection with Bahauddin. Haji advised me to imagine him sitting directly in front of me (he gestured to a point at arm’s length), before beginning an exercise or meditation—that is, to give space to his Presence during the practices.

Every time I remember Haji Abdulgafur, I am overtaken by a feeling of gratitude and a deep, essential appreciation for the gift we received — a gift that still seems unexpectedly and undeservedly generous. What I hope to convey here is an attempt, at least in part, to repay our debt of Love by sharing this experience and allowing it to multiply in the reflections of other hearts.

I use the words “in the reflections of other hearts” deliberately, not as a poetic flourish. What we received as a gift was transmitted in exactly that way — from heart to heart (qalb) in a literal, not metaphorical, sense.

As Haji Abdulgafur answered our questions, he explained certain aspects of the exercises for developing the subtle centres — the lataif. Then he called each of us, one by one, and asked us to place a hand on the spot on his chest that the Naqshbandi associate with the latifa of the heart (qalb). Holding the breath, he pronounced the formula of dhikr several times with his heart.

I cannot explain what exactly was happening during this kind of transmission — perhaps it involved the fields around the heart. I can only say that there was definitely a kind of electricity present. Although I was calm and even relaxed, at the last - the seventh - repetition of the dhikr my vision suddenly darkened and my heartbeat faltered. The room was not hot, and I was in good health. At the same time, bright, radially spreading flashes of light appeared — photisms that I see fairly often. My head spun a little, but I wasn’t frightened. I only wanted to sit down so as not to cause a fuss if I suddenly felt worse. I shared what I had felt, but Abdulgafur, watching me with a smile, only nodded silently.

My mind was struck by the simple fact that without any physical intervention — merely by including me in the field of his heart — Haji Abdulgafur was able to alter my ECG. Of course, the slight disruption of rhythm was the least significant part of what actually happened. What was transmitted continued to be absorbed over the following months, in proportion to my growing capacity to receive it. This showed itself, in particular, in the diminishing activity of certain aspects of my lower “self.” I had always believed that long years of purification were required to silence “the snake and the peacock” – those sides of ego representing animalistic tendencies and vanity.

It turns out that it can simply be given to you — by those whose hearts are free of such voices.

Simply given — from heart to heart.


THE BOSNIAN DERVISHES


Our small caravan, which set out to wander through the towns and villages of ancient Illyria (today the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina), travelled through Sarajevo, Mostar, Blagaj, Travnik, and the villages of Kacuni and Oglavak. The old and restored tekkiyas – the places where dervishes gather for litanies - and the people we met left an imprint on my being that I can unhesitantly call transformative.


It belonged to various Sufi orders over the centuries and is one of the most powerful natural places of spiritual force where a Sufi tekkiya has ever been built.

Sufi tariqas — the most influential of which were the Naqshbandi, Halveti, Qadiri, and Bektashi — appeared in Bosnia in the 15th century, carried on the wave of Turkish influence that spread across the Balkans during the Ottoman Empire. Under the communist government of Yugoslavia, the activity of Sufi orders was banned, and the tekkiyas were closed. Nevertheless, Sufi groups continued to exist quietly. The movement to revive their activity, begun in the 1950s, finally succeeded in the 1980s, when the ban was lifted and the dervishes emerged from the underground.

According to legend, one of the sheikhs of this Naqshbandi tekkiya had once been a wandering dervish from Central Asia. His teacher placed an iron chain around his ankle and instructed him to wander until the chain broke. Wherever the chain snapped, the dervish was to remain forever and teach. When he reached this place, the chain broke, and he stayed, eventually becoming the sheikh. His t;rbe (tomb) is still there.

The practices of the Naqshbandi and other orders that made their way into Bosnia were adapted by Sufi sheikhs from T;rkiye and Central Asia to the needs and temperament of the local people, as is the Sufi way. The “silent” dhikr of the Naqshbandi, for example, was replaced in the Balkans by litanies interwoven with vigorous breathing exercises.

The Bosnian dervishes, who have preserved the ancient gathering places and the traditional clothing of their orders — white skullcaps among the Qadiri, crimson fezzes and green vests with shoulder panels among the Naqshbandi — entrust their fate to the sheikh without reservation. For if a disciple cannot learn to trust the teacher completely, how can he ever learn to trust God?

In all the dervishes I met in Bosnia, I noted a great inner strength and deep warmth of heart, combined with a complete absence of attachment or idle curiosity.

Adab — the code of conduct — in the Bosnian tariqas is rooted in traditional Eastern patriarchal norms, so younger disciples are not permitted even to stand with their backs toward senior disciples or the sheikh. It must be said that these and other rules, which to a modern Western person may appear like medieval obscurantism, fit quite naturally into the semi;European, semi;Asian cultural fabric of this part of the Balkans.

According to Muslim tradition, women participating in dhikr sit separately from the men — on a special balcony screened by a wooden lattice, or in an adjacent room. Only in one tekkiya among those we visited did women and men sit in the same space. This was the halka (circle) of the Naqshbandi tariqa in the village of Kacuni. We spent several days in the building attached to the tekkiya.

The Bosnian dervishes use faith and the renunciation of self (fan;) as the primary method on the Path. In speaking with us, the Naqshbandi sheikh explained the meaning of the phrase: “Tark;i;dunya, tark;i;uqba, tark;i;tark.”

Tark;i;dunya means renouncing this world; tark;i;uqba — renouncing the world to come; tark;i;tark — renouncing even the act of renunciation. The thoughts and heart of a dervish must not be attached either to the snares of this world or to the hope of heavenly reward. In the end, the dervish relinquishes even the very foundation of selfhood — the individual choice to renounce or to accept. His will is dissolved in the will of God.

When we asked whether they practiced anything besides dhikr — for example, the refinement of lataif — we were told that they know of these practices but do not consider it important to focus on developing subtle centres or special abilities. When a disciple begins to see something unusual — colours or other signs of awakened subtle perception — the sheikh usually tells him: “Good. Move on. Do not get stuck in the excitement brought on by new abilities.”

At the very end of our conversation, the sheikh — who throughout the meeting had occasionally cast quick, searching glances at us — made a remark that answered one important question I had not dared to ask. It was an answer I had been seeking for a long time. He said:

“People do not realize that their soul needs food and clothing just as their body does. When the soul does not receive proper nourishment, it suffers. One of the signs that the soul is receiving the nourishment it needs is when a person dreams of flying.”

The traces of the last civil war are still visible everywhere in Bosnia — walls of houses riddled with bullet holes, monuments to the dead, memorial plaques, and red paint – reminiscent of blood shed - on the pavements marking the places where shells exploded and took human lives. But the most terrible traces of war, as always, are in people’s hearts.

One of the Sarajevo dervishes we met during dhikr in the Qadiri tekkiya told us his story: during the war, his entire family was killed; he went to defend his city and was wounded. He became a dervish only after the war, and for many years now he has been praying to be able to accept, forgive, and release the past. His mind longs to be freed from this burden, but his heart is still full of pain and anger.

The original meaning of the word “Islam” is “submission” — the unconditional acceptance of God’s will and of one’s destiny, whatever it may be. I realized that I had known nothing of true acceptance and surrender until, in the village of Oglavak, we met a dervish named Abdullah.

He showed us a three;hundred;year;old Naqshbandi tekkiya, completely destroyed by the Croats and rebuilt from the ashes after the war exactly as it had been before — even the wooden frame of the mihrab niche was re;carved according to the old design.

Abdullah said: “They did us a good service by forcing us to rebuild the old tekkiya.”

There was no anger or bitterness in his eyes or in his voice.
The whole being of Abdullah was permeated with quiet acceptance. His manner was remarkable for the absence of the small, restless movements that we — ordinary people with unsettled thoughts and unresolved issues — make constantly and unconsciously. When he was still, he became truly motionless, firm and unshakable as a rock: a man at peace with the world and with himself, an embodiment of surrender — of Islam.

For us Westerners, obsessed with maintaining personal control over our lives, the idea of surrender is difficult to accept, because for us surrender is associated with slavery. Meeting Abdullah taught me that Islam, in its original and truest meaning, is not the submission of a sheep before slaughter — it is the surrender of the lover at the feet of the Beloved.

The elderly dervish Essad, with blue eyes, pleasant Slavic features, and hair almost entirely grey beneath a crimson Turkish fez, was our gracious host in the old Naqshbandi tekkiya of the Bosnian town of Travnik.

He began by pouring magnificent Bosnian coffee into tiny cups of the local style — he had prepared it in advance in the small kitchen of the tekkiya — and offered each of us a cup with a slight bow, solemnly pouring from a copper coffee pot. Someone asked whether smoking was allowed, and received the reply: “Of course! As we say here, coffee without a cigarette is like a mosque without a minaret.” Essad called the combination of tobacco and coffee kaif — pronounced chaif in Bosnian. He himself, however, did not smoke, nor did any of the other dervishes we met.

He told us many interesting and useful things, but one story stayed with me and settled deeply in my heart. I want to share it here as a gift to all of us from our Balkan dervish brothers, and to use it to conclude my notes about our caravan:

…Long ago, in one of the Eastern lands, there lived a famous scholar. His authority and knowledge grew so great that he was given the title Sheikh al;Islam — meaning that his interpretations of the Quran were to be accepted by all the ordinary imams of that country.

Years passed. The sheikh grew old, and he had everything: fame, achievements, wealth. Yet for some reason he felt he had not fulfilled his true purpose. This feeling gave him no rest at night, and he decided to become a dervish and try to find the meaning of life in distant wanderings. The sheikh gave away all his possessions to the poor, for nothing of this world should burden a wandering dervish, and he set out on the road — toward a widely renowned Sufi khanaqah – dervishes’ dwelling - in Egypt.

He saw many cities and countries. One day, entering the mosque of a village along his route, the sheikh — now a simple dervish — heard the sermon of the local imam. The imam’s words, addressed to the villagers, seemed to him laughably childish and primitive. And the imam himself, in the sheikh’s eyes, behaved like a child; his interpretations of the Quran appeared nothing short of heresy. When the indignation in the sheikh’s chest reached boiling point, the imam suddenly turned sharply toward him and shouted:

“Just what I needed — you telling me how to teach my people! Get out of here at once, and don’t let me see your shadow again!”

Beside himself with anger, the sheikh rose and left the country without stopping. He spent many years in hardship and wandering, and at last reached the famous khanaqah of the Egyptian Master of Sufis — the long;awaited goal of his journey. The Master allowed him to stay for a time. The sheikh;dervish loved everything there — the practices, the lofty spiritual conversations, the learning of the Master and the other disciples. He wished to remain forever and asked the Master to accept him as a student.

But the Master’s face grew sad as he replied:

“Unfortunately, I cannot teach you. You are too old, and far too hardened in rationality. Teaching you would be like trying to engrave a pattern (naqsh) on solid stone. I am a metalworker; I can work only with material that is soft and pliable. You need a stonemason.”

The sheikh;dervish asked whether he had any hope of finding such a teacher.
“There is only one person who can help you, but he lives far from here,” the Master said — and he named the man. It was the very same imam who had once driven the sheikh out of the mosque.

Confused and distressed, the sheikh;dervish left Egypt. After a difficult inner struggle, he resolved to seek out the imam. When, after many months, he finally reached the place where they had met long ago, he learned that the imam had already died.

In despair, the sheikh;dervish wandered to the cemetery and fell upon the imam’s grave. His hopes, his expectations, his years of searching — all were buried with the imam. The only person who could help him lay silent beneath the earth. The sheikh felt his last strength leave him, and it seemed to him that he too had died…

At that moment, the deceased imam appeared to the lifeless sheikh. The saint opened something in his chest — like a pair of doors — and the sheikh felt that his heart had come alive, and that until that moment it had never truly lived.
He rose from the grave and went home, for there was nothing left to seek.


THE HEART OF TURKESTAN


The semi;legendary figure of the Sufi whom Kazakhs call Arystan;Bab remains perhaps the most mystical among the Masters who taught on the lands of present;day Kazakhstan.

According to tradition, Arystan;Bab was a companion of the Prophet Muhammad ;. The Kazakh legend tells that once, during a shared meal at which Arystan;Bab was present, the Prophet ; handed him a date pit, instructing him to deliver it to a worthy successor of the Teaching named Ahmad, and granting Arystan;Bab extraordinary longevity so that he might fulfil this mission.

Thus Arystan;Bab received a sacred object — an amanat — which he carried in his mouth as he wandered from place to place, until he reached the settlement of Yassy (today the city of Turkestan in southern Kazakhstan). There, meeting the seven;year;old Ahmad Yasawi, Arystan;Bab finally recognized in him the one destined to continue the teaching and gave him the amanat. Shortly after this event, Arystan;Bab passed into the next world.

The transmission of a sacred object received from the Prophet ; carries within it a whole constellation of metaphors. On the one hand, the fact that the date pit came from the founder of the lineage of Sufi Masters makes it a symbol of Baraka — the intangible transformative force transmitted through the chain of succession.

On the other hand, according to the teaching on inner transformation, the subtle substances accumulated through a Master’s own efforts may be contained within the substances of his body, and may also be deposited upon external objects. The methods of obtaining these subtle substances — the “elixir of life” — are part of ancient knowledge once widespread, including in Central Asia.

Perhaps the entire story of the amanat being passed to Ahmad Yasawi is nothing more than a legend. But to this day the essence of Arystan;Bab — and the place of his resting — radiate the charge of the power he accumulated.

According to legend, Tamerlane — who held Ahmad Yasawi in special reverence — repeatedly attempted to build a mausoleum for him, but each time the structure collapsed. Then, in a dream, he received a revelation: before building the mausoleum of Yasawi, he must first build the mausoleum of Yasawi’s spiritual Master — Arystan;Bab. After the memorial in Otrar was erected, the mausoleum of Yasawi was also completed without further difficulty.

As our dervish guide — Kamila, a Kazakh Uzbek healer — explained to us, pilgrimage is now performed in the same order: first Otrar, then Yassy (Turkestan). We followed this order as well.

The inner sanctum of the mausoleum — the chamber where the tomb of Arystan;Bab stands — was closed to visitors, so we sat nearby and silently performed dhikr. The guardian of the mausoleum approached us, studied us attentively, peering into our faces, and said: “Well then, ask your questions.”

We were a little taken aback and replied that we simply wished to spend a moment near the saint. When he learned that we had come from far away, he opened the inner chamber of the mausoleum and, inviting us inside, recited a Quranic sura for us.

He gave the impression of someone very open and almost childlike in his directness, yet at the same time he seemed to possess a well;developed capacity for direct perception, instantly sensing the quality of a visitor’s essence. I was surprised, for example, that he immediately asked who in my family practiced healing — and indeed, I do have such a close relative.

We stayed in that extraordinary place in the middle of the open steppe for a couple of hours before sunset. For me, this time of day carries the greatest power, and the hours spent with Arystan;Bab were an intense, positive experience, filled with a sense of love, inner peace, and serenity.

The next day, we travelled to Yassy – now Turkestan - to visit the mausoleum of Khwaja Ahmad Yasawi. He is still held in extraordinarily high esteem in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, T;rkiye, Tatarstan, and other Turkic;speaking countries as the one who rooted the teaching of the One Creator among their peoples. Visiting his resting place in Yassy was considered equivalent to performing the hajj to Mecca. Just as Rumi’s Masnavi is often called “the Quran for Persian;speaking peoples,” Yasawi’s poetic Hikmets are known as “the Turkic Quran”.

Despite its grand scale and certain pomp, we felt that the Presence of Yasawi was somehow not strongly felt inside the mausoleum itself. But it was powerfully present in the small structure to the left, on the spot where Yasawi’s underground cell once stood.

Unlike the Naqshbandi, who did not encourage seclusion, a significant element of the Yasawi dervish practices was khilvat — a forty;day retreat of solitary contemplation and remembrance of God, usually carried out in a completely dark, isolated space (a cave or a cell). During khilvat, strict fasting and abstinence were observed.

It is possible that this tradition originated with Yasawi himself, who, upon reaching the age of the Prophet ; (63), withdrew from the world and settled in an underground cell he had dug for himself. There he lived until his death — according to some sources for ten years, according to others - for fifty.

This subterranean chamber has survived to this day and, together with Yasawi’s mausoleum, remains a place of pilgrimage. Unfortunately, in recent years access to the cell has been closed, and a grate has been placed over the entrance. 
Still, it is a powerful place to perform dhikr and set the right intentions, for it feels as though the spirit of Yasawi is present there in his timelessness. While we were sitting there, we sank into that inevitable awareness that earthly life is brief, that all material pursuits and gains are illusory, and only the return to the One is certain.

As Yasawi wrote in one of his most famous stanzas:

Do not doubt it — none who walk this earth will stay;
All that you’ve gathered in your life will fade away.
Tell me, where have your parents gone, your kin, your clan?
The wooden horse with four legs comes for every man.
Let go of thoughts of gain; think of nothing but the One.
No gentle sister or a faithful wife will stay for long.
Awake, poor soul — life flies like wind; why linger so?
Endure, Khwaja Ahmad — the earthly road is brief, you know.
Know this: the Lord has shaped you out of dust and rain,
And to the dust of earth, your circle done, you’ll turn again.

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PATH OF GREAT MOTHER


Another distinctive feature of the Sufi sacred sites in Kazakhstan is the special reverence for the feminine aspect of the Supreme Being: the Great Mother. We turn to Her seeking healing, relief from suffering, forgiveness, and consolation. Like an earthly mother, the Great Mother wishes to protect and heal all Her children — the righteous and the sinful, the noble and the broken. She does not judge; Her love is unconditional.

The women of Kazakh legend embodied these qualities, and their resting places became portals of the Great Mother. Our path led us through these “places of power” of the great feminine principle: the mausoleums of Karashash;Ana — the mother of Ahmad Yasawi — in Shymkent; of Yasawi’s daughter, Gauhar;Ana, in Turkestan; and of the healer Domalak;Ana in southern Kazakhstan.
 
Finally, the path of the Great Mother brought us to Ungurtas, the homeland of the most renowned Kazakh healer and dervish, Bifatima;Apa, who combined the shamanic practices of the ancient Turkic peoples with Sufi traditions. Women like Bifatima are called baks; in Kazakhstan — a word meaning “shaman, seer, healer, wise woman.”

The difference between Sufis and shamans lies in the nature of the forces to which these two lines of Tradition appeal. Sufis work with the force that drives the spiritual evolution of humanity — a force whose origin lies far beyond our planet and our star system. Shamans serve the powers of nature, local to their own ecosystem, whose purpose is to maintain the balance and well;being of all parts of that ecosystem, including human beings.

Baks; refer to these powers sometimes as aruakh — the spirits of the ancestors — and sometimes as the natural elements: wind, water, earth, and so on. Both Sufis and shamans perform essential functions for the evolution of humanity, though Sufis serve the needs of the universal Spirit, while shamans serve Mother Earth and Her children.

Yet there are examples of Sufi orders, such as the Yasawiya, whose founder Ahmad Yasawi united both currents in his practices, weaving together the ancient Turkic traditions and Islamic mysticism. As the great Sufi poet Hafez wrote:

Kaaba or idol;shrine —
It matters not at all;
Wherever eye may turn,
The Light of God will fall.

The Yasawi tradition is continued today by Bifatima;Apa (apa means “sister” in Turkic languages) — a hereditary seer and healer who became known not only in her own country but far beyond it, in large part thanks to the documentary film The Last Dervish of Kazakhstan made about her. Apa attributes her abilities to her capacity to work with the power of the “dragon” — the elemental forces of her land — as well as to her spiritual connection with the mystical Sufi Arystan;Bab.
Bifatima lives in the village of Ungurtas, eighty kilometers from Almaty. She is now in her ninth decade and has largely withdrawn from active practice, though she still receives all who come to her seeking help.

As soon as we stepped into Apa’s small house, we found ourselves in her skillful hands. We thought we were prepared for anything — yet we were still stunned by her “greeting.” Without giving us a moment to recover from the road, Bifatima sat each of us down in front of her in turn, took our heads in her hands, and began to twist them back and forth. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing. Then, as a finishing touch, she delivered a firm slap between the shoulder blades. Her stratagem — which seems to consist in catching our ego off guard before it has time to erect its defenses — worked perfectly.

Over the years of her selfless work, Apa healed and guided thousands of people who came daily to her small dwelling from every corner of Kazakhstan and beyond — people suffering from incurable illnesses, addictions, psychological disorders, and other afflictions. Some stayed with Apa for several days, others for months.
 
Following the ancient tradition of the baks;, in particularly difficult cases Bifatima performs the sacrifice of a sheep from her own flock. I understand that to many this may seem like superstition. But the ritual of animal sacrifice goes back to the times of ancient beliefs — and not only pagan ones. Those who worship the One God, such as the Jews, also practiced this custom, though perhaps the meaning of atonement through sacrifice had already been partly forgotten even then. In the Muslim world, the celebration of Kurban Bayram is an echo of ancient knowledge about the role of sacrifice in the planetary metabolism and about certain points in the annual cycle when it must be performed.

Traditional communities always had individuals who, through innate abilities and special training, possessed sensitivity to shifts in the energetic balance of their ecosystem — the very sorcerers, magi, shamans, priests, and so on. By signs known only to them, they could foresee the ecosystem’s need for certain kinds of energies at specific times, and then called upon their community to make a contribution. By “contribution” they meant the investment of life;force and spiritual energy of high gradations. If the contribution was insufficient, the ecosystem faced trials — natural disasters, epidemics among humans and animals, wars, and so forth.

If the community had enough people capable of generating the subtle energies of the required quality — what different civilizations called soma, ambrosia, or the elixir — everything returned to balance. But when, due to the general deterioration of humanity’s psychic condition several millennia ago, such people became fewer, the need for sacrifices arose, because a large amount of subtle energy is released at the moment of a living being’s death. Perhaps the legends of dragons demanding the most beautiful maiden each year are rooted in ancient events when such drastic measures were taken to replenish the ecosystem’s missing energy.

In the Christian tradition it is no coincidence that Christ is called “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The subtle energy released on a planetary scale at the moment of the Savior’s sacrifice, according to Christian doctrine, purified all of humanity. There is no need for sacrifice when enough people are capable of Work of a higher order. If one has a gold coin, there is no need for a hundred coppers. However, many of the people who come to Bifatima for help have long since spent even the few coppers they were given by right of birth. And so a sacrifice is offered on their behalf, easing their burden for a time… leaving hope that one day they may awaken to the necessity of inner Work.

They say that Bifatima can be very stern with some people. Her manner recalls the malamati dervishes, whose shocking or unconventional behavior invites criticism from onlookers, though the true purpose of such actions is the correction of those for whom they are intended. Yet Apa never refuses help to anyone who comes to her, and many find healing through her.

During the days we spent with Bifatima, no more than ten people were with her. Apa has become far less severe with her visitors than she once was in her younger years. Although there is still not a trace of sentimentality or people;pleasing in her, her true nature — the embodiment of the Great Mother’s love, the force that supports, nourishes, and restores all living beings — shines through her grey eyes. I felt that within Apa there was an ocean of unconditional Love, and that her outward sternness was simply a way to avoid people’s emotional attachment, to prevent them from turning the healer or guide into an idol and losing sight of the One who truly heals and guides.

Bifatima knows only a few words of Russian, so we could not have long conversations. And yet, to receive what Bifatima teaches, words are not needed. A person becomes a Lover not by talking about Love, but by immersing themselves in its presence. Apa does not instruct; she awakens the dormant capacity within people.

Apa allowed us to serve her food and refill her cup with tea according to a special ritual customary in Central Asia — pouring only a little at a time, again and again, so that the tea remains hot and fresh. During these simple, unpretentious actions, the magic of nonverbal transmission took place — what Sufis call “the permeation of the essence,” the most important blessing a seeker can receive while sitting at the feet of a Master.

Naturally, we experienced all the peculiarities of life in the Kazakh countryside, where people arrange their household in the way familiar to them — much like in a yurt. My friends were distressed by the dirt, the disorder, the swarms of flies, the crowdedness of Apa’s home, where cats and people were all mixed together; where hosts and guests slept, cooked, and ate in the same small room, which also stored firewood, food supplies, and gas cylinders. My mind was irritated by the unsanitary chaos, yet inwardly I felt cozy and calm; keeping my heart connected to Apa, I felt as though I were back in my grandmother’s house as a child.

One walks the Path in order to grow, year by year, into the understanding that:
Love is not always found where things are lofty, noble, and pure…

Love stands above ideals, above principles, above order…

Love covers all things, forgives all things, and endures all things, because –
tongues will fall silent, suns will burn out, universes will fade into oblivion, good and evil will vanish — but Love will not cease, for Love is God.

During the three days we spent with Bifatima, in between preparing meals and washing dishes, we followed her instructions: went to pray in the underground “mosque” — a small cave dug beneath her house — and a couple of times climbed the sacred hill nearby. Our first journey there was in the company of a mysterious wandering dervish who, by “coincidence,” happened to arrive at Bifatima’s home at the same time we did.

My next story will be about this unusual man.


THE WANDERING DERVISH


He kept repeating, “How lucky you are…”

And indeed, we truly were.

For three months the dervish had been living with Bifatima;Apa in Ungurtas, helping her care for the animals. He had planned to leave the healer’s home the day before our arrival, but something made him stay. Now he understood why.
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Among the many encounters that happen during travels, the ones I love most are those that occur by chance. A “chance” event, of course, is simply what we call the workings of forces whose pattern remains hidden until the right moment.

When we arrived at Bifatima’s little hut, among the other visitors there was a small, dark;skinned man with a Genghis;Khan;style beard and a dagger in a sheath at his belt. He was present during Bifatima’s “initial patient intake,” which, among other things, included her standing on the backs of us lying stretched out on the floor. The session did not end there; after Apa, the strange man with the dagger joined the “examination.” We learned later that he was a dervish.

I was told to lie down on the floor again — first face down, then face up — while the man “scanned” me from head to toe, moving his hands a couple of centimeters above my body. It took only a few seconds. Then he and Bifatima exchanged a brief remark in Kazakh, and without any questions or warning the dervish pressed his elbow directly into the painful spot, exhaling with a strange hissing sound, as if deflating a balloon.

When the odd procedure was finished, he told me in Russian that there had been “cold” there, and that now the circulation of energy in that place should be restored, and I should feel warmth. I was impressed by how he identified the problematic organ without asking a single question. Later, the dervish also described the nature of the pains I occasionally feel in that area — with a precision that surprised me.

His age was impossible to determine, as was the case with other Sufis we met on our travels: he could have been fifty, or he could have been well over seventy. The eyes of such people have a particular radiance, a sign of an extraordinary vital force that is untouched by age and marks a person of spirit.

He explained the purpose of the dagger he always carried with him: it was a weapon against dark entities. It turned out that in addition to the dagger, he also had a long sword for the same purpose, which he likewise never parted with during his wanderings. I suspect, however, that these weapons serve to protect him not only from dark entities but also from dark personalities.

The dervish refused to give his name. I said that in that case I would address him as Ya Pirim (“Elder”), to which he laughed: “You said it — not me.”
As is customary for wanderers, the dervish was not tied to any permanent place. The voice of intuition that had urged him to stay in order to meet us would, from time to time, direct him to one place or another. He followed this inner call and remained at each point for as long as needed, then moved on. In this way he had traveled all across Kazakhstan, stopping at the same places of power we had visited, as well as many others we had never even heard of.

Sometimes he practiced healing or exorcism, but only if he received an “instruction” from above. If no instruction came, he offered no advice and did not treat anyone.

Bifatima told him to show us the way to the sacred hill, and we set off immediately. Our guide climbed the hill with a lightness unexpected in an older man, and we could barely keep up with him. From time to time he would turn back and shout that we must not stop or look around, because we had entered the space of the Spirit.

As we moved deeper into that sacred space, one of our Friends began to feel its cleansing power. The dervish told us not to stop and not to interfere with the person whose built-up inner pain and tension were spilling out in sobs that could neither be halted nor restrained. He said that a good half of the people who come here experience emotional purification; this means that the power of the place is working, and that it is a good sign.

I thought that, in addition to the place itself, two other factors were at work — the ones Sufis always take into account: time and people. Zaman, makan, ikhwan…
The dervish kept repeating, “How lucky you are…”

Breathing heavily, we barely managed to keep up with our guide. We were grateful whenever he stopped at certain points marked by granite stones or posts. In these places we recited prayers and formed intentions, and then he would say something in Kazakh — apparently calling upon the Spirit.
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When we reached the top of the hill, the dervish told me to walk around the pillar standing at its center seven times counterclockwise. Meanwhile, one of our Friends was still undergoing inner purification through tears and sobbing, while another had slipped into contemplation. The wind was cold, and I walked quickly, swinging my arms to keep warm, circle after circle, reciting dhikr aloud in rhythm with my steps. The dervish approved, saying that the power of a sacred place reveals itself more fully when accompanied by the vibration of sound.

At last, having gone through our purification, we returned to Bifatima’s house — happy and content — and after drinking some tea, we saw that our dervish was already standing in the courtyard with his simple belongings and his staff, ready to set out on the road again.

As we said goodbye, he told me, “You asked my name. If you like, you may call me Khidr,” and he laughed.

Indeed — isn’t it amusing? How could this strange little man be Khidr, the legendary immortal saint who sometimes takes on bodily form to guide dervishes along their Path?

Or could he?

For when we look a little more closely at anyone who has managed to teach us something on the Way, we inevitably begin to see, behind their visible appearance, the features of Khidr — the eternal Guide of All Who Seek.

 
THE BORDER ZONE


This extraordinary story was told to us by Ilya — the man who drove us through the roads and roadless expanses of Tajikistan, and who has since become our close Friend. The event he described may sound like a legend, yet it truly happened and was witnessed by dozens of people.

Ilya is one of the nearly vanished community of ethnic Russians born in Tajikistan at the end of Soviet times — those who did not leave Dushanbe after the collapse of the Soviet Union and somehow survived the upheavals of the Tajik civil war of the 1990s. In the early 2000s, Ilya served at a border outpost in Khatlon, on the frontier between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. The story he shared with us took place during his service, involving him and his fellow soldiers.

On the grounds of their outpost there was a large stadium where the border;guard unit was taken for morning runs. That day they were driven out around four in the morning, when dawn was only beginning to break. Still shaking off sleep, the young men ran across the field, shivering in their thin army shirts as they moved through a low mist drifting over the stadium.

As they crossed the central part of the field, an astonishing sight caught the attention of the entire unit: an unknown white;bearded elder, dressed in a white turban and white garments — a long shirt and trousers of the kind usually worn by Afghans — was spreading a prayer rug right in the middle of the stadium, clearly preparing for the dawn prayer. Seeing the soldiers turn their heads toward him, the mysterious stranger smiled and waved warmly. Thirty or forty young men, Ilya among them, automatically waved back without breaking stride. Even the officer running at the front of the unit, as if spellbound, returned the greeting. Meanwhile, the old man laid out his rug and began the morning namaz.

The unit continued its run, and only then did it dawn on everyone — starting with the commander — that something was terribly wrong. What on earth was a civilian doing on a guarded military outpost? By that time the soldiers had already reached the far edge of the stadium, where a small grove of trees briefly hid the stranger from view. They ran through the grove — and found that the old man and his prayer rug had vanished. He could not possibly have finished his prayer and disappeared from sight in such a short time.

The elder had simply dissolved — melted into the morning mist.

The officer shouted up to the sentry on the watchtower:

“Who let a civilian onto the grounds?!”

The sentry only shrugged in bewilderment — what civilian? What are you talking about? Of course no one had been let in. The outpost was guarded day and night. Not even a mouse could slip through: rows of barbed wire, four watchtowers, and armed sentries on duty around the clock.

The officer might have dismissed the whole thing as a half;dreamed vision brought on by sleepiness — if the white;bearded elder had not been seen by the entire unit, including our Ilya, whose sincerity is beyond doubt. And so the whole outpost was raised on alert. They searched every inch of the grounds, but found no trace of the Afghan;looking elder. Nor did they find any breach in the perimeter through which he might have entered or escaped.
Mystery — and nothing else.

Rumors spread, and soon it emerged that the outpost had been built on the site of a small mosque. During Soviet times the mosque had been destroyed, but just as manuscripts do not burn, sacred places do not vanish. Not only because the subtle imprint left by countless prayers endures through decades or centuries — but because holy sites were originally established in special places on earth where openings into other dimensions naturally occur. These are true border zones, where the spiritual world meets the physical one.

The story Ilya told us gives reason to suspect that through this very earthly border outpost ran another frontier — the boundary between worlds. And our Friend had the rare fortune to witness their meeting on a misty morning at the edge of dawn.


THE BULGARIAN ALEVIS


There were four of us — including a driver and a Guide: Brother Veysel Bayram from the community of Bulgarian Bektashi dervishes. From Sofia we set out across the towns and villages of what was once Eastern Rumelia — the former Balkan territories of the Ottoman Empire.

My worries about communication proved unnecessary: it turned out that our Guide spoke excellent Russian, and as for us, we could easily extract meaning from Bulgarian speech. To everyone’s mutual delight — we had lock-on!

Veysel Bayram belongs to the Alevi community — Turkic;speaking people from Anatolia, Persia, and Azerbaijan who settled in southeastern Bulgaria between the 13th and 16th centuries. Scholars refer to this unique confession as “Alevi,” but they themselves more often call one another k;z;lba; — “red;heads.”
The name comes from the color of the headgear once worn by members of this spiritual;knightly community, which in essence resembled an order of Templars. The Bulgarian k;z;lba; no longer wear red bands on their caps, nor do they wear ritual clothing anymore (except for women at certain ceremonies). As Veysel said, “Clothing is external; we consider what is inside a person to be what matters,” recalling the Rumelian dervish;abdals of old who sometimes walked around without any clothing at all.

But some customs remain: Alevi men still shave their beards and grow long mustaches, as you can see on this photo of Veysel. And the requirement for men to wear a head covering — especially in sacred places — has also been preserved.
The k;z;lba; are no longer a military order but ordinary rural communities, although in recent years many of the younger people have moved to the cities. What has remained among them is a deep devotion to Sufi teaching, for each of them, in essence, steps onto this path from birth.

During our caravan we passed through Alevi villages whose entire populations were dervishes. The spiritual center of such communities is the tekkiya, where gatherings are usually held, and where on holidays the whole community — from the youngest to the oldest — comes together. A tekkiya complex typically includes the mausoleum of one or more Sufi saints who taught in these places.

The head of the community — both worldly and spiritual — is an elder dervish elected by its members, known as the Baba, the “father.” In antiquity and the Middle Ages this form of spiritual community was widespread, yet I could never have imagined that in the heart of Europe one could still find villages where, at the same hour of the day, all the inhabitants, like a single organism, recite the prayer formula given to them by their spiritual guide.

The Alevis trace their spiritual lineage - source of grace, or Baraka - to Ali, the cousin and son;in;law of the Prophet ;, and in their tekkiyas one can see images of Ali or his emblem - the calligraphic lion symbol. Bektashi dervishes regard the Prophet Muhammad ; and his cousin Ali as manifestations of two of the three hypostases of the triune Light. Muhammad represents the prophetic line of the Teaching, open to all believers, while Ali embodies the esoteric or hidden dimension of the Teaching, transmitted through the initiated.

In addition, most contemporary Alevis are dervishes of the Bektashi order, following the tariqa of the Sufi Master Haji Bektash, who taught in Anatolia in the 13th century. It is believed that the Sufi Baraka was transmitted to Haji Bektash through the lineage of the Turkic Sufi Ahmad Yasawi.
 
The teaching of the Alevis and the Bektashi is unique: it cannot be classified under any existing religion, although it contains elements recognizable not only to Muslims and Christians, but even to Buddhists and followers of shamanic traditions. For example, the Alevis have a ceremony similar to the Eucharist, involving the taking of three ritual cups of wine, as well as a rite reminiscent of baptism with water.

Like any Sufi School, the Bektashi applied the principle of “time, place, people” to project their mystical teaching into Anatolia, where the population was quite diverse: one part followed the Islamic religion, another - the teaching of Christ, a third adhered to Turkic pagan beliefs, and so on.

Muslims consider the Bektashi to be hidden Christians, and Christians consider them Muslims, while the Bektashi themselves are not particularly concerned with questions of religious identity. Not once among the Alevis did we encounter anything even remotely resembling a debate about doctrines or symbols of faith. The k;z;lba; are tolerant of all paths, though they are fully aware that they walk their own unique route toward faith and truth — in the spirit of what Rumi wrote:

What am I to do, O believers?
I do not know who I am.
I am not Christian, not Jew, not Zoroastrian, not Muslim.
I am not of the East, nor of the West…

And equally in harmony with the words of Omar Khayyam:

Every sect invents its theories about me,
But I belong to myself. I am what I am.

The Alevi Bektashi I met are exactly that: people who are what they are — seekers of the Reality that stands behind all formulations. What is a matter of fierce confrontation for orthodox communities poses no problem at all for the Sufis. God is one, but the paths to Him are as numerous as the hearts that seek Him.

Bektashi communities could form as monastic or knightly orders — which, though rare, was by no means unheard of among Sufi Schools, whose history has taken on every imaginable form. A Sufi School has no “standard” model and cannot have one; it adopts whatever form and appearance are dictated by local conditions and by the needs of the Sufi work.

When the k;z;lba; began to be persecuted and exterminated for their “heretical” views, they moved to Rumelia — the eastern part of the Balkans, where the population was more tolerant. Here they settled mainly in rural areas as compact communities that still exist today in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania — communities we were fortunate to visit.

Haji Bektash was the first among the Sufis to encourage the participation of women in gatherings — long before most of humanity recognized the equality of the sexes. Veysel told us that there are certain ceremonies in which he cannot take part without his wife, for Alevi traditions place great importance on the balance of masculine and feminine energies. The harmony of these two principles is always present in Bektashi liturgies.

One evening, Veysel and his friends invited me to an Alevi gathering in the village of Chernik in eastern Bulgaria, where professional musicians from T;rkiye performed their traditional psalms. I noticed that many people in the hall were singing along with the performers, having known these ancient litanies since childhood. Veysel asked me whether the Naqshbandi (the dervishes of my order) use music as a teaching tool, and I replied with the words of the order’s founder, Bahauddin Naqshband, who said: “We do not use music, but we have nothing against others using it.” Veysel liked this saying.

In the music and recitations of Alevi liturgies, rhymes and rhythms based on the numbers four and seven are often used — numbers whose significance in the Bektashi teaching we have already mentioned. Like the Sufis of other orders who inherited the most ancient Knowledge, they regard these numbers as lying at the foundation of the manifested world, as well as at the foundation of the hidden hierarchy of the Tradition. “The world is governed by the Four and the Seven,” wrote Omar Khayyam, noting the fact that the material Universe is created in tetrads composed of two complementary pairs of opposites, and that any complete whole is born and exists as a sevenfold structure (an octave).

The reflection of this symbolism can be found everywhere in the ritual objects of the k;z;lba;: for example, in this candlestick made from a tree branch with four natural offshoots:

According to custom, Bektashi gatherings begin with the lighting of a candle in a lamp whose four legs recall the Tetrad of Creation, as well as the four Qutbs — the pillars of the Sufi Teaching embodied on earth in every era. The symbolism of the Four also appears in the decoration of the wooden staffs or canes often used by the Bektashi.

The four rings placed at different distances from one another on staffs of the Bektashi dervishes symbolize the four circles of humanity according to the teaching of Haji Bektash: shari‘at, tariqat, ma‘rifat, and haqiqat.

The first circle of humanity is shari‘at. This is the outermost, exoteric circle; it encompasses people who follow laws, moral rules, and religious commandments out of fear of punishment or hope for reward in this life or the next. At the same time, the lower nature — the subconscious — of these people may remain suppressed and untransformed by the light.

To purify and transform it, a person must step onto the path of training in the School — tariqat (from tariqa, “Path”), where seekers;dervishes follow the guidance of the Master and the specific practices prescribed by him until qualitative changes occur within their selfhood. The exercises given by the Master may resemble religious rites, or they may have nothing in common with them at all.

When the inner self of the student has been transformed, as in an alchemical retort, he encounters his Presence or Guide, through whom direct knowledge becomes accessible to him — knowledge grasped without books or instructions. The Bektashi called this stage ma‘rifat, or gnosis, and those who attained it were known as the Knowers, the Arifs.

The innermost and most esoteric of the circles is called haqiqat — from haqq, Truth. Very little can be said in words about the mode of existence of those who reach it, except that the consciousness of such an individual dissolves into the Higher Mind, and he becomes an instrument of the Divine will, having relinquished the impulses of the self.

The road of the Four and the Seven did not end there; it drew us onward to the other lands of Rumelia the following year, where new encounters awaited.

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THE ALBANIAN BEKTASHI


In June 2023, a larger group of my Friends and I set out on a pilgrimage to Rumelia again — today’s Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Romania. From the 14th to the 19th century, the Balkans were part of the Ottoman Empire, and it was here that the Bektashi Sufis taught and built their temples. By an irony of history, Bektashi communities have almost disappeared in modern T;rkiye, the lands where Haji Bektash taught, while the Balkan countries have become the center of the order’s activity.

Our Friend Veysel Bayram, who had guided us on our journey through the Bulgarian tekkiyas, kindly agreed to lead this pilgrimage as well. In every country our caravan passed through, we met Veysel’s friends and acquaintances — surprisingly many of them within the close-knit Balkan diaspora of Bektashi Alevis.

The Bektashi brotherhood in Albania, despite years of persecution and underground existence during the dictatorship, survived and preserved the traditional structure of initiation established as early as the 16th century. It consists of four degrees: muhib (the devoted one), dervish, Baba, and Dede;Baba.

Each of the four degrees requires a period of preparation lasting no less than three years — a term close to the thousand;and;one;night trial period found in some other orders. Initiation into each rank is marked by a ceremony with collective prayers, an oath of loyalty pronounced by the initiate, and a communal celebration with a sacrificial offering — kurban.

The day of initiation into the muhib degree becomes the student’s new birthday and defines his duties and functions within the brotherhood. From this stage onward, he may participate in the group gatherings — meidan. The word meidan refers both to the meeting hall inside the tekkiya and to the ritual of collective gatherings, accessible only to initiated members of the brotherhood, held there weekly, with more solemn ceremonies on feast days.

Among Albanian Sufis, as in other Balkan countries, women participate in the ceremony on equal footing with men. Their placement within the meidan follows the harmony of the masculine and feminine principles and the traditional Bektashi ideal of gender equality.

The degree that follows muhib is called dervish. Dervishes may not have a family or a worldly profession; they are required to live at the tekkiya - the place of assembly and residence for Bektashi dervishes, headed by a Baba elected by the community.

A region comprising seven or more tekkiyas is headed by a Dede;Baba. Dede means “grandfather.” Albania is divided into six such regions, each led by a Dede;Baba, and a seventh, separate region includes North Macedonia and Kosovo. At the head of all Bektashi stands the supreme leader, located in the order’s main center in Tirana.

Our journey through the Balkans began at the Bektashi Center in Tirana. Spread across a large tract of land in a picturesque setting against green mountains, the main tekkiya of the Albanian Sufis includes, among other things, the mausoleums (t;rbe) of departed Masters, a large meeting hall, and a museum.

The Bektashi Center, built in the early 2000s, is open to pilgrims of any faith — and even to tourists. Although the ceremonies and the prayer spaces themselves — the meidan — are closed to those who are not initiated into the order, Bektashi temples as a whole are open to everyone, following the principles of the order, founded on tolerance and peaceful coexistence with all confessions. “God is One,” the Bektashi say. Every visitor is welcome and received as an honored guest.

It was here, at the Bektashi Center, that our group was welcomed by Veysel’s friend — an Albanian Alevi;Bektashi named Hisen. Hisen, who spoke excellent English, became our Guide during both days of our stay in Albania. It turned out that, in addition to his native Turkish, Hisen also spoke Albanian and Macedonian, as he was born in North Macedonia. Macedonian is very close to Bulgarian, and so, as we discovered, our Guide understood a little Russian as well.

Hisen comes from an Alevi family whose members have belonged to the Bektashi tradition since at least the 17th century. I have been fortunate to meet hereditary Sufis more than once in my travels, and although they look and behave like ordinary people, they are different.

Those who, like myself, have stepped onto the Path not so much thanks to as in spite of the way of life of their ancestors must expend considerable effort overcoming within themselves the inertia of the lineage — the legacy of countless generations whose lives passed in sleep. Those born into Sufi families receive a kind of “head start” even before birth, inheriting the spiritual strength accumulated by their forebears. Simply being in their presence leaves a light in the soul.

Hisen is a muhib of the Bektashi community in Tirana; he takes part in the meidan gatherings and follows the practices prescribed by his Dede;Baba. When asked whether he had children, Hisen replied that he was not married and was reflecting on which Path he should choose next. He was inclined toward the way of the dervish — a path on which a muhib must renounce worldly life.

Hsien's attitude toward us possessed those particular qualities I have often noted among Balkan dervishes. They are warm;hearted and hospitable, yet entirely free of sentimentality, emotional clinginess, or people-pleasing. They do not seek to instruct, but if you turn to them for advice, they will treat your request with full attention, and the advice will be accurate and helpful — even if it comes not immediately and not in the form you expected.

Although the Bektashi owe you nothing, they perceive the need with which you come to them as a duty of brotherly love, and they fulfill it with complete dedication and effectiveness, unafraid of any work or effort, expecting nothing in return — not even gratitude.

All these rare qualities arise when a seeker has absorbed the truth that everyone he meets on the Path, and everyone who comes to him for help, is a part of the One, appearing before him in one form or another.

Hisen guided us through the Bektashi museum, showing us the historical relics of the order and answering our many questions.

What interested me most were the traditional attributes of the Bektashi dervishes — objects that seemed almost like magical items from fairy tales, capable of accumulating, preserving, and, at the right moment, transmitting miraculous power: the taslim;tash, the “stones of endurance,” twelve;pointed stars carved from jade or onyx; the Bektashi headgear known as the taj, the “crown”; staffs and walking sticks; shifa bowls used for healing; and much more. Perhaps no other branch of the Sufi Tradition has devoted as much attention to working with material instruments as the Bektashi.

Beginning with the rank of dervish, the Bektashi take a vow of celibacy — a practice that distinguishes them from other Sufi orders, where a monastic way of life is generally not accepted - except for temporary periods of khilvat, withdrawal from the world. According to Veysel, the energy that initiated Bektashi of the higher ranks are able to concentrate through abstinence is an order of magnitude greater than what is accessible to ordinary followers of the teaching. The practice of transmuting sexual energy — known only to the initiated — leads to the accumulation of inner power, which the Bektashi are able to focus, among other things, into “objects of power.”

This is one of the reasons why my Friends, during our travels, always search in antique shops for such rare artifacts and, when possible, acquire them for the tekkiyas or for personal work. It is believed that these objects, once belonging to dervishes of past centuries, carry Baraka, and that a discerning person capable of entering into a harmonious relationship with such an object can derive great benefit.

Bektashi, however, will neither give nor sell such an object, for it is bestowed upon a student only by his teacher, and the attributes belonging to a departed Master are preserved in the t;rbe or in the tekkiyas. Only by a chance chain of circumstances can these magical objects end up in the hands of an antiquarian.
Even today, Bektashi Sufis of the higher ranks continue to wear the traditional headgear — the taj — with four or twelve panels divided into four sections, symbolizing the four stages of the mystical path: shari‘at, tariqat, ma‘rifat, and haqiqat. The dervish’s taj is entirely white, while Babas and Dede;Babas wear headgear in white and green.

On the second day of our Balkan caravan, Hisen led us to a cave high in the mountains near the Albanian town of Kruja, where, according to tradition, lived and taught Sari Saltik — the legendary miracle;worker, a Sufi from Bukhara who, it is said, was sent by Haji Bektash to the lands of Rumelia to establish the Sufi message there.


THE PATH OF SARI SALTIK


We began our Balkan pilgrimage at the mausoleum;t;rbe of Sari Saltik in Kruja, Albania, and completed it at the t;rbe of Sari Saltik in Babadag, Romania. Covering more than a thousand kilometers from sea to sea — from Albania through Macedonia and Bulgaria all the way to Romania — we traveled in the footsteps of a single legendary figure, the mysterious “copper;bearded elder” who, in the 13th century, brought the Sufi message not only to the shores of the Black Sea but to all the lands of the Balkans.

They say Sari Saltik was born either in Bukhara or Anatolia and that he was fair;haired or red;haired (hence his epithet: in Turkic, sar; means “yellow”). He was a miracle;worker, endowed with irresistible magnetic power, and could assume any form, depending on whom he encountered.

The small town of Kruja lies half an hour’s drive from Tirana, at the foot of the mountain of the same name. Like the Sufi cities of Bukhara, Fez, and Konya, Kruja is a settlement where almost every family has been connected with Sufis for centuries. We were told that the town has 365 shrines of the Bektashi order, but without doubt the principal object of veneration and the main site of pilgrimage are the tekkiya and t;rbe of Sari Saltik on Mount Kruja, founded in the 14th century.

The tekkiya lies just below the summit of the mountain, hidden behind rocks and almost invisible from the path. The cave where, according to tradition, Sari Saltik lived stretches several meters into the rock. Inside, numerous candles are always burning, casting a flickering dance of light and shadow across the soot;darkened stone walls. The crevice ends in a small, dark grotto; moisture continuously seeps from its cold walls.

Squeezing into the darkened grotto, I lift my head, trying to sense the currents of mountain forces passing through it — forces caught in its caves in their striving toward the peaks. An invisible mountain vortex pulls me into an upward spiral, and I grasp the walls with my hands so I don’t fall. As it turned out, one of my Friends took a photograph at that very moment.

It seems that here, in this power center of the mountain, in complete darkness, Sari Saltik and other holy anchorites before and after him spent endless hours in solitary contemplation — khilvat.

The fog had completely covered the mountain peak; we were thoroughly chilled, and just in time Hisen called us up to the tekkiya for the ritual sharing of raki — the homemade Balkan fruit spirit. We settled wherever we could — on chairs, cushions, and carpets — and accepted from Hisen’s hands the small glasses with a little of the warming “fire;water” poured at the bottom.

As we learned, the threefold symbolic drinking of raki, passed from the hands of the Teacher or a senior dervish, sometimes accompanies the suhbats — the gatherings of the Bektashi. As in a similar Eucharistic ritual, what matters here is not the drink itself but the hands from which it is received; this is why the figure of the cupbearer in Sufi poetry symbolizes the Friend or the Beloved, and the wine — Sufi Baraka.

I know well what religious pedants, who do not understand the essence of the ritual, will say about this — but an answer was given to them long before our time in the famous verses of the great Sufi Hafez of Shiraz:

Be merry, cupbearer — fill up my wine once more!
Let crimson spill upon the prayer rug on the floor,
If he who’s wiser, stronger, speaks the word divine —
Then pour, O friend, and let obedience shape the wine.

Water is a wonderful medium for transmitting a whole spectrum of energies and information, and ethyl alcohol, in the right measure, can serve this purpose even more effectively. I hasten to add, however, that the key words here are “in the right measure,” which makes the difference between a medicine and a poison.
 
We thank our hosts in Kruja and continue along the roads of our caravan, where our journey will conclude in Dobruja — the name once given to the eastern regions of present;day Bulgaria and Romania — and where we will once again encounter the trace of Sari Saltik.

…When in the 13th century the Ottoman Empire took control of Dobruja, a sizeable Turkish community settled on the western shore of the Black Sea. According to several accounts, Sari Saltik may have lived and taught here during that time, and it is in this land, in the small Romanian settlement of Babadag (“the Father’s Mountain”), that he was likely buried.

The chronicler Evliya ;elebi writes that when the Ottoman sultan Bayazid arrived in Babadag during a military campaign, the local inhabitants told him about the ruined t;rbe of Sari Saltik. That night, Sari Saltik himself appeared to the sultan in a dream. The saint foretold the sultan’s victory in Moldavia and asked him to clear the dust from his tomb, indicating the place where it should be sought.

In the morning, the sultan ordered excavations at the spot he had been shown, and soon a marble sarcophagus was discovered with an inscription “in Tatar letters”: “Here lies the grave of Saltik;Bey Seyyid Mehmed Ghazi.” Convinced that this was indeed the burial place of Sari Saltik, Bayazid commanded that the ruined t;rbe be restored and that a tekkiya and a mosque be built beside it.

In the last decade, the t;rbe has been restored once again in the original Rumelian style, thanks to the tireless efforts and personal funds of Ertan Demirhan, a hereditary Dede from a Turkish Alevi;Bektashi lineage.

Veysel arranged a meeting for us with Ertan;Dede in Bucharest, where he now lives with his family. In T;rkiye, Dede is a special genealogical line of Bektashi Sufi Teachers who trace their lineage to the People of the Cloak — the family of the Prophet ;. Like the sacred castes of other traditions — the Brahmins or the Kohanim — the descendants of the Dede traditionally marry within their own lineage in order to preserve genealogical purity. Yet, as Ertan;Dede shared with us with a hint of regret, the generation of his children now chooses their life partners freely, and the parents cannot stand in their way.

Our interlocutor is a kind;hearted, open man with cheerful sparks in his eyes and the subtle sense of humor so often found among Turkish dervishes. He asked who we were, what had brought us to the Sufi Path, and one of the Friends replied that it was the search for Truth that had led us to Sufism. True to the traditions of Khoja Nasruddin, Dede immediately winked and responded: “When you find it, give me a call.”

By profession he is a businessman, but by vocation — following the destiny of his lineage — he is a Bektashi Sufi. As Ertan Demirhan explained to us, the Dede do not necessarily serve as Sufi sheikhs; they do not walk on water or move mountains. Yet the people respect the Dede and come to them for counsel, honoring the accumulated wisdom of a lineage in which many generations devoted their lives to the spiritual path. “To give advice to anyone who comes to us — that is our duty. But whether a person can hold it, whether he will make use of it — that is not in our power. If it is his own will and with God’s help, he will find the strength to apply our counsel for his benefit.”

We told him about our trip to Babadag and asked about his contribution to the restoration of the shrine. Ertan;Dede noted that it had been extremely difficult to overcome the resistance of the Romanian authorities, who kept delaying the permit for restoring the t;rbe of Sari Saltik, and that only after the personal mediation of Recep Erdo;an, who at the time was the Prime Minister of T;rkiye, did the Romanian authorities give their approval.

The life of Sari Saltik is so deeply wrapped in myth that one cannot help but wonder — was he truly the protector of all Sufis, Khidr, or Saint Elijah? Khizir;;lyas, as Khidr;Elijah is called in the Balkans, appears in human form when the message of the Tradition needs a new impulse.

It is the aim of the Sufis to return the Teaching to its true sources, cleansing it of dead forms and ossified formulations. This is not always an easy task, for the forces of reaction sometimes enter into direct conflict with dervish communities — as happened in the Bektashi tekkiya in Tetovo, North Macedonia.


DERVISH ABDUR MUTALIB


Few people have ever heard of the small country called North Macedonia, tucked away in green valleys among the Balkan mountain ranges. Even fewer know that this Orthodox land, whose inhabitants write in Cyrillic and speak a Slavic language similar to Bulgarian, has long been — and still remains — home to Sufi communities.

And almost no one knows that here stands an ancient, still;active tekkiya where, in our own day, a dervish of the Bektashi order lives permanently — a man named Abdur Mutalib, whose life is an example of daily ascetic devotion and of confronting darkness with the light of love and forgiveness.

We learned about the Macedonian dervish from his Friend, our Bulgarian Guide Veysel Bayram, and through him we received permission to visit the Harabati;Baba Teke in the town of Tetovo.

Harabati;Baba Teke is located an hour’s drive from the Macedonian capital, Skopje, in a place that any feng;shui specialist would judge exceptionally auspicious: behind the tekkiya rises the ;ar Mountain, offering protection, and before it stretches a wide plain through which the Pena River flows.

It was here, in the 16th century, that a Bektashi dervish from T;rkiye settled — Sersem Ali;Baba. Some say he was exiled to the Balkans by his brother;in;law, the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, after the sultan’s sister, Ali;Baba’s wife, fell out of favor at the court. But in the tekkiya, we were told a different story: holding a high position at court, Ali;Baba suddenly felt the utter emptiness of courtly bustle and resolved to devote the rest of his life to spiritual seeking, withdrawing from both princely wrath and princely affection to what was then the far edge of the Ottoman Empire — the small town of Kalkandelen, now called Tetovo.

When the sultan learned of the strange choice made by his favored son;in;law, he exclaimed in anger: “Then go wherever you wish, if you are such a fool.” Sersem — the nickname that stuck to Ali;Baba after that moment — means precisely “fool, simpleton.” (Which once again confirms: a poor dervish is the one who has not at least once in his life been called mad or idiotic — so strange we sometimes appear in the eyes of the people of this world.)

After Sersem Ali;Baba departed to the better world in 1538, the only one of his disciples who had survived — known as Harabati;Baba — founded a tekkiya around his teacher’s mausoleum, where Bektashi dervishes then settled.

During the communist period in Yugoslavia, the temple was turned into a ski lodge where tourists drank beer among the sacred graves, and discos were held inside the mausoleum itself. Yet, having endured this desecration, the tekkiya was revived in the 1990s and returned to the Bektashi community.

…We arrived in Tetovo toward evening. At the Harabati;Baba Teke they were already expecting us, and to begin with, they offered everyone boza — a traditional Balkan drink made from fermented grain, very nourishing and wholesome. We sat down in a semicircle, and Dervish Abdur Mutalib, through his student who spoke English, told us about the history of the tekkiya and then invited us to ask any questions.

I asked about the meaning of the twelve;pointed onyx star called the taslim-tash — the “stone of endurance” — which Abdur Mutalib always wears as a pendant at the level of the solar plexus or slightly below. The taslim-tash is a distinctive attribute of Bektashi dervishes; after their death it is passed on to one of their students or kept in the tekkiya as a sacred object. We had seen such twelve;pointed stars of jade or onyx set into the walls of the historical khanaqah of Haji Bektash in T;rkiye and in other places.

Beyond its symbolic role, the taslim-tash was meant to fulfill a specific function. The “stone of endurance” was the stone that the Prophet Muhammad ; and his followers tied to their belts during long journeys through the desert. On one level, its purpose was purely practical: it pressed against the stomach and muted the feeling of hunger. On another level, the “stone of endurance” was a special instrument of transformation.

The fact is that any situation in which a person is forced to overcome difficulties is a source of great energy. This power can be wasted — erupting in irritation, anger, frustration, in blaming others, and so on. But if a person endures the trials sent to them, gaining victory over the impulses of the lower self, the strength born of such overcoming accumulates within and can later be used for the development of the soul. The “stone of endurance” was not only a reminder of this, but could also serve as a vessel for storing that energy. For this reason, the taslim-tash of departed Sufis is a true object of power.

For Macedonian Sufis, the word “dervish” is not a general term but the designation of a specific rank within the hierarchy of the Bektashi order. The first two levels of seekers — ashiks and muhibs — lead worldly lives, with families and professions. Beginning with the rank of dervish, a Bektashi takes a vow of celibacy and dedicates his life entirely to the Sufi Path. Practices of restraint, including those involving the transformation of procreative energy, have always been part of the Bektashi tariqat.

Such was the choice of Abdur Mutalib, who has neither family nor home other than the tekkiya, where he receives students not only from the surroundings of Tetovo but from all over Macedonia and even from T;rkiye. The system of inner discipline — finer than a hair and sharper than a sword — was distilled by Haji Bektash into the concise credo of the order: “Be the master of your hands, your tongue, and your loins,” which, as it was explained to us, means mastery over one’s actions, one’s words, and the desires of the body.

According to Veysel, thanks to the energy preserved through abstinence, Bektashis of the rank of dervish and above are considered to possess a special power, which is why they can act as teachers and healers. This calm strength is palpable when you are near Abdur Mutalib. He is open, kind, simple, and hospitable — yet the deeper sense cannot be deceived: within this man, lightning is hidden. One of our Friends experienced something he described as an electric    discharge that shot through his body from head to toe when Dervish Mutalib looked him straight in the eyes. He said he had felt something similar only once in his life, when his Sufi teacher — Omar Ali;Shah — once nearly knocked him off his feet with a single glance.

But let us return to our conversation with the dervish. When we told the dervish that although there are Muslims in our groups and we use prayer formulas accepted in the Islamic Tradition, our Teacher does not require mandatory conversion to Islam, Abdur Mutalib unexpectedly said: “This is how it should be.”

Only later did we understand that he said this in order to be heard by the strange square;shaped man who had been following us like a dark shadow from the moment we entered the gates of the tekkiya. This heavyset, broad;shouldered bearded man in black clothing kept trying to attract the attention of one of us, shouting something and clearly showing his displeasure that we preferred to speak with the dervish and his students rather than with him.

Only after we had left Tetovo were we told that this man was the leader of the Macedonian Wahhabi fundamentalists who, in 2002, broke into the tekkiya with a Kalashnikov and pistols and, when the residents resisted, opened fire. They seized part of the territory, including the meidan — the hall that the Bektashi use for communal ceremonies. Despite the complete illegality of the takeover, the local authorities washed their hands of the matter, choosing not to intervene.

For more than twenty years now, Dervish Abdur Mutalib and his followers have been trying to restore justice, but the legal battles have so far led nowhere. Meanwhile, the Wahhabis have settled on the unlawfully occupied territory of the tekkiya, converted the meidan into a mosque, and from time to time harass visitors — as we ourselves witnessed.

The attacks of fanatics grow stronger the more their zeal is inflamed by the sight of how the people’s path to the true Teaching remains open, while they themselves attract no one. And no matter how many loudspeakers you mount on your illegally occupied “mosque” so that your prayer drowns out the neighboring dervishes, it will not help. For did not the Sufi Jami write:

The rose has left the garden — what shall we do with the thorns?
The King is gone from the city — what shall we do with his court?
The bird has flown away — what shall we do with the cage?

Religious fanatics, convinced that they are restoring the purity of faith, in reality worship an idol they have fashioned out of the religious form, while the Sufis preserve and transmit the connection with the living core of the Teaching, which always hides behind the hardened shell of religions.

But it is hard to imagine a greater challenge on the dervish’s Path than living side by side with a dangerous enemy who curses you daily and places obstacles in your way.

When we learned about the dramatic circumstances of the dervish’s life at the Harabati;Baba Teke, the meaning of a phrase Abdur Mutalib had said to one of our Friends suddenly became clear. The Friend had asked the dervish whether he had ever experienced the “path of blame,” similar to that followed by the malamati Sufis. The dervish replied that he would think about it and answer later. Before it was time for us to leave, the young man who had been serving as our interpreter approached the Friend and conveyed the dervish’s answer. It was this: “I am experiencing such a path at the present time.” I noticed no anger in the dervish, nor any hatred toward those who daily give him lessons in patience and forgiveness.

We take our leave of the Harabati;Baba Teke and its hospitable guardians, yet the threads of connection we have woven here remain unbroken, now stretching between this place and the countries from which we came.

In this small tekkiya, as if on a front;stage, the ancient drama unfolds day after day — a reflection of the fate of the Sufi Tradition through the long centuries: we were persecuted, driven from our sanctuaries and had them desecrated, our books were burned, and we were accused of heresy and apostasy.
But our Work will not cease as long as souls such as the Macedonian dervish Abdur Mutalib continue to illuminate the Earth with their light.


PROFESSOR AHMET TASHIN


“The Path will not be found anywhere
except in service to people.”
(from Bustan of Saadi Shirazi)

In June 2024, together with a group of Friends from several countries, we undertook an eight;day pilgrimage through Sufi sites in T;rkiye — Istanbul, Eskisehir, Konya, Hac;bekta;, K;r;ehir, and Ankara — places connected with the heritage of Alevi dervishes, the Bektashi order, and other Sufi tariqats.
We asked our Bulgarian brother Veysel Bayram to join us once again, and he kindly agreed. Moreover, Veysel invited his own Sufi mentor to accompany us. And so our Guide on this journey became Professor Khoja Ahmet Tashin from Konya — a man who, in a way that defies ordinary understanding, unites within himself the qualities of a scholar of religion, a traveler, and a Sufi mystic.
;
Khoja Ahmet Tashin;effendi is, in worldly terms, a professor, a Doctor of Philosophy, and a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of Konya University. He studies the spiritual heritage of Alevis, Yazidis, and Assyrians. The professor has traveled extensively not only throughout T;rkiye but also in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Syria, and other countries. Somewhere on these journeys he met his Sufi Teachers — the secret of whom, however, is not permitted to be revealed, and thus it remained unknown to me.

My first encounter with the professor was brief — we exchanged only a few words of greeting during dinner in Eski;ehir, where our group arrived in the evening. But a single glance was enough to understand whom we had been fortunate enough to meet. I remember saying to Veysel: “Whatever others may think of this man, he is a Sufi.”

This instantaneous recognition is difficult to explain, even to oneself. It requires no knowledge of a person’s history, the names of his Teachers, or what they taught him, because none of that matters. On any continent, in any culture or confession, you recognize the Sufi in a person if you have met Him before — because the Sufi is One. (There are, of course, exceptions — times when a Sufi does not wish to be recognized. But that is a story for later.)

In T;rkiye, dervishes of the Mevlevi, Bektashi, Halveti;Jerrahi, Naqshbandi, and other orders are active everywhere, yet to open their doors one needs a key. Khoja Ahmet and Veysel Bayram were our “keys.” In most of the tekkiyas we visited through their connections, the Alevi dervishes were very open and friendly, inviting us to share their food (we arrived just in time for the celebration of the sacrificial feast of Kurban Bayram), showing us their temples, and even inviting us to the rituals of dhikr and semah, which are usually held without outsiders.

And so, Khoja Ahmet joined our group on the third day of the caravan, and his arrival immediately changed the entire course of our journey. In a typical week;long trip, the third day is the “interval” point, when the initial enthusiasm of the participants begins to fade under the weight of fatigue and the difficulties of the road, while chaotic tendencies, on the contrary, start to grow.

Those among us who have studied the principle of the Gurdjieff’s enneagram know well what I mean. One could also call such a moment a bifurcation point, in which the system becomes aware of the need to reassemble itself on a new basis — and either succeeds in doing so or yields to chaos. At the critical moment of the “interval,” a group often needs an influx of energy from outside, an additional impulse.

Khoja Ahmet began his Work with us by carrying us through this bifurcation point with the calm grace that is so characteristic of him.

That day we were visiting one of the oldest “houses of power” of the Bektashi order in Anatolia — a large 14th;century complex that grew around the mausoleum of Seyyid Battal Gazi, a semi;legendary hero of 8th;century Anatolia on a hilltop near Eski;ehir. The complex in Seyitgazi, built around the presumed resting place of Battal Gazi, first served as a center for wandering dervishes;qalandars, and later for the followers of the Bektashi order. Today there are no active Sufi communities here, but the complex itself, in addition to the mausoleum, includes an old tekkiya.

So what did the professor do to return our caravan to the Straight Path? He invited us to sit around the tomb of Seyyid Battal Gazi, and for half an hour he recited suras — not loudly, yet not softly either, though the power in his voice was almost hypnotic. This is how it is when sound arises from the essence of a person, and its frequency awakens a hidden string within our inner being. Without our noticing, Khoja Ahmet attuned us to the primordial vibration revealed to the Prophet ; and sealed in the original sound of the Holy Book in Arabic.

We felt like parts of a musical instrument being tuned by an experienced master. Not through admonitions or moral exhortations — which would have been useless — but through the magic of the Word, our trials turned into a blessing, and our tension transformed into strength. Something before our eyes was transfigured by what the Sufis call Baraka, and each of us became part of that experience.

The main purpose of this pilgrimage — as indeed of all the others we undertake — was not simply to honor the memory of the saints of the past, but to absorb and carry to the needed places the special force accumulated in each of these centers of Tradition. This force requires transmission and circulation, much like electricity, for in the absence of use its charge begins to weaken.

Or this: like flowers that, opening their petals, eagerly await the bees ready to gather nectar and carry pollen to other blossoms in distant places, the sacred sites await pilgrims of the right quality — those who are ready and able to become a vessel in which the “honey,” the subtle substance, can be transported to the places where it is needed now. And of course, each pilgrim brings a portion of it to the place where they live and to the community of which they serve as a part.

The condition required for the “honey” to be gathered is a special kind of attunement that our Grandmaster Omar Ali;Shah called lock;on. For this to occur, the pilgrim’s vibrations must be tuned and harmonized with the wave of the sacred place. Within each of us lives this primordial vibration of Unity, which we call the “inner being” or “essence.” Unfortunately, the voice of essence barely breaks through the interference created by earthly preoccupations. Yet there are people capable of making our inner being sound as it was intended by the Creator, and finding such a Master is a rare fortune.

In every tekkiya we visited, Khoja Ahmet began with this attunement, this lock-on, which he performed — within the framework of a centuries;old Turkish ritual — through prayer and invocation of the saints. Thanks to this resonance with the energy of the place, wondrous things happened to us: physical healing, cathartic release from emotional burdens, spiritual illuminations, and much more. After the prayer ritual in some tekkiyas, the professor would tell us stories about the Sufis whose resting places we had visited, and later we realized that his narratives had been chosen in such a way that they were meant for a specific person or persons in the group — different ones in different places.

With his characteristic delicacy and subtlety, Professor Tashin taught us one lesson after another. The lesson of service as a method of Work — khidmat — was certainly among them. Khoja Ahmet, a recognized scholar and a respected teacher of venerable age, carried our luggage, helped order and serve food in roadside taverns, handed out water and sweets on the bus, patiently listened to our endless requests and complaints with his unfailing gentle smile… Watching him, I understood what a Sufi can become after passing from the stage of the ordinary person — nafs;i;ammara (“the Commanding Self”), through the stage of self;reproach — nafs;i;lawwama (“the reproaching self”), to the stage of nafs;i;mutma’inna (“the tranquil self”).

The lesson of service — khidmat — that Ahmet;effendi taught us had another side as well, one that is very difficult for many of us, myself included, to grasp. The difficulty lies in the one;sided understanding of what it means to “obey the Teacher.” By “obedience” we usually imagine unquestioning fulfillment of instructions, yet it can also mean the unconditional acceptance of what is done for us. Focusing on the first, I struggled for a long time with the second.
Behind the visible, earthly service of Khoja Ahmet there was a higher service, perhaps still inaccessible to our understanding. Yet at times Khoja Ahmet gave indirect hints about what he was doing for us. When we stopped in his native Konya, he bought a large quantity of sugar candies in a confectionery shop next to the mausoleum of Mevlana Rumi, and the next morning he distributed them to all of us with the request that, upon returning to our countries (Spain, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Canada, Moldova, Bulgaria, and Russia), we pass them on to the Friends in our groups as a blessing from Mevlana and from the Turkish Sufis.

Why sweets? Sugar has a crystalline structure, and organic crystals — like the quartz crystals in computers and phones — can store not only charge but also information. The custom of distributing candies or sugar after a dhikr ceremony, which we observed in tekkiyas in different countries, is based on the understanding that energy or information of perfection — Baraka — can be transmitted through such simple carriers. It is believed that the first Sufi to begin distributing sweets immediately after special prayer exercises, with the intention of making possible the transmission and rooting of Baraka in chosen students, was Ahmad Yasawi himself.

For me, the meeting with Khoja Ahmet was a personal revelation. To recognize the Khoja was like encountering my own Self, coming from the future, from the world of possibilities. He is the one I may hope to become, with God’s help, when…
…my heart is filled with love and compassion for all beings not only in certain moments, but in every moment…

…I am able to guide events along the Straight Path, giving myself into the hands of the higher will; to stop without restraining, to command without ordering, and to direct without controlling…

…the fear of selfhood leaves me, for that which has always been part of the One cannot truly disappear…

…the restlessness of thought gives way to tranquility (mutma’inna), for whatever the future may hold — God is already there.

;
THE WINE OF RUMI


Rumi, Khayyam, and other poets compared the human body — made of dust and water — to a clay vessel or bowl, and the spirit to wine or flame. The “wine” of the Sufis refers to the subtle substances or higher energies released by our soul;essence from the heaviness of the matter in which it is encased. The spirit is hidden within matter like the scent of roses dissolved in the air, yet its special concentration can be felt in places where the Masters lived and worked, and where their Work continues even now. In such places, the fragrance condenses into “wine.”

One of the most powerful experiences of this state of “intoxication” occurred in the mausoleum of Mevlana Jalal ad;Din Rumi, when the spirit of the Master himself played the role of Cupbearer. It was preceded by an important event for me and my Friends, something the dervishes call bayat — the vow; it marks the moment when the whole being of the disciple recognizes the point of no return from the somnambulistic sleep and self;deception in which we live until we encounter the Tradition.

As established by our Grandmaster, the vow is taken in the mausoleum of Mevlana Rumi, who, as is well known, had followers from both East and West.

As soon as we began to pronounce the bayat, the hall of the mausoleum — moments earlier filled with crowds — suddenly, as if by an unheard command, emptied, and my Friends and I found ourselves standing alone by Mevlana’s tomb, enveloped in the silence that had descended. The ritual was brief, and soon after it ended I felt, rising from within like a bubbling stream, an ever;growing surge of joy and Love overflowing the soul. Its force was irresistible. From somewhere came the certainty that this river of Love will carry us when, having completed our tasks in this vale of tears, we set out for the Father’s Home…

Perhaps Mevlana was in such a state when he first began his ecstatic turning to the sound of his Friend’s hammer — the silversmith — right there on a busy street. In such moments, space and time, identification with the bodily “I,” the fear of judgment, the voice of reason all lose their power. What remains is only an unending, unrestrained torrent of exultation.

The ecstatic feeling poured outward, shaking my body with an uncontrollable laughter that from the outside must have looked more like sobbing. This is how madmen, the blessed, or the intoxicated behave — those whose ordinary neural pathways are switched off by forces beyond the reach of reason. Rumi’s “wine” proved far too strong. No wonder Hafiz wrote:

Who is drunk, and who is in love — knows no shame…

Meanwhile, the hall of the mausoleum had begun to fill with people again. Fortunately, our Sufi Guide, Khoja Ahmet Tashin, was waiting for us not far from Mevlana’s tomb and, immediately understanding my state, came to my aid. Within a couple of minutes my ecstatic intoxication shifted into a calmer, more manageable condition. The feelings of bliss, joy, and Love stayed with me for a long time afterward, but I was able to walk, and an hour later we continued our journey.
Mevlevi dervishes of Konya performing their ecstatic whirling ceremony
The second experience of “intoxication” that I can share, though less intense, occurred in Konya on the evening of the same day.

The path of our caravan led us to a meeting with a Mevlevi dervish — an old friend of Ahmet Tashin, a writer who wrote a book about his Path, and the owner of a workshop that makes hats for the whirling dervishes. Being a person with a great sense of humor and self-irony, he calls himself a “lying mystic”. He behaved somewhat like a jester, in the best traditions of the scaramouch dervishes of the medieval times. And yet, speaking of the spiritual matters, he became gravely serious and profound.

After an unhurried conversation over tea, the dervish invited our entire group to the weekly Mevlevi dhikr that was to take place that evening. The invitation became one in a series of “non;accidental coincidences” that accompanied us throughout our journey.

The dhikr was private — not one of those that the Mevlevis conduct openly for the public. The lights were extinguished, and by candlelight the litanies and the turning began, lasting a good two hours. We were told that such ceremonies usually last even longer, but the time was shortened for our sake.

The dhikr was led by the Mevlevi dervishes gathered in a circle, while we and the other guests sat behind them, joining in the repetition of the Divine Names as best we could. After approximately an hour of countless repetitions of the dhikr formulas and watching the dervish’s robe billow as he turned, my perception quietly slipped into a trance — an altered state of consciousness.

I observed how my inner being was slipping out from under the control of the ratio, the Commanding Self. Thoughts and worries disappeared, no longer devouring energy as they usually do. I caught myself sitting with my mouth open like a blissful idiot, not caring in the least how I looked from the outside. No regrets about the past, no fears about the future troubled me. The tension was gone, as were the restless thoughts of “what’s next on the schedule,” which never leave me during the caravans I am responsible for organizing. God is neither in “yesterday” nor in “tomorrow”. He is in the eternal “now.” The dhikr anchored me firmly in the “here and now.”

Having slipped out of the prison walls of the mind, I savored the fragrance and sharpness of the Mevlevi ambrosia taking hold of my being from head to toe, part by part. Nothing remained in the world except this sensation and the awareness of the presence of the Cupbearer, carrying the magicians’ drink around our feast…
As in these famous words of Hafez:

To harp and flute among the Friends I stay,
A jug of wine beside me, counting not the days.
With warmth of wine now flowing through my veins,
Why should I yield again to my self’s sway?


;
THE HIDDEN MASTER


Not all Sufis reveal themselves to the world. Unknown to anyone, living quietly among us, are Masters whose task does not include teaching, and their true nature will remain forever hidden.

We became unwitting witnesses to a curious episode while standing at the entrance to the Mevlevi tekkiya, waiting to be invited in for the dhikr. While we waited, we noticed Khoja Ahmet Tashin warmly greeting a simple;looking man who was sitting in a tavern next to the tekkiya. The professor brought him over to our group and told him where we had come from. The man looked embarrassed, grinning foolishly and muttering, “Ah… so that’s where you’re from, ah… I see, I see.” With that, he excused himself and quickly disappeared into the crowd.

A few days later in Ankara, the professor, explaining to us the difference between manifest and hidden Masters, told us that at any given time there are a number of Sufis of the highest rank on earth who perform special tasks. They never teach openly, and it is impossible to recognize them in a crowd.

This is exactly how it was in the case of the great 14th;century Anatolian Sufi known as Somuncu Baba — the Father;Baker. Somuncu Baba did not teach through sermons or admonitions, though he loved to use parables and Sufi tales. Above all, he created learning situations for his students, compelling them to pass through trials — often very difficult ones — that had the power to transform the seeker’s inner being. Among Somuncu Baba’s hidden disciples was Amir Bukhari, an eminent scholar and the son;in;law of Sultan Bayazid I.

When Sultan Bayazid built the famous Ulu Cami mosque in Bursa, he invited Amir Bukhari, the most respected imam of the community, to lead the first Friday prayer at its opening ceremony. To everyone’s astonishment, Amir Bukhari declined the invitation, saying that this honor should be given to his sheikh — Hamid Wali, the greatest saint of Bursa. No one in the city had ever heard this name, and Bayazid asked Amir who this hidden sheikh was. Amir replied that his sheikh was the one known as Somuncu Baba, the baker whose bread had fed all the builders of the mosque.

The sultan agreed, and Amir approached the Father;Baker, asking him to deliver the sermon. Somuncu Baba said, “What have you done, Amir? You have exposed us!” Feeling extremely uncomfortable, the Master nevertheless ascended the minbar and delivered his famous sermon in which he revealed the seven levels of meaning of Surah al;Fatiha, the opening of the Quran. Since the secret of the Father;Baker had been unveiled by Amir Bukhari, the very next day after his astonishing sermon Somuncu Baba left Bursa and set out on pilgrimage. In the final years of his life he lived in Aksarai, and it is in that city that his tomb and the mosque named after him now stand.

The true nature of Somuncu Baba and his role in the Tradition remained hidden during his lifetime, and even the place of his burial was concealed underground. To reach it, one must pass through a low doorway of the mausoleum and squeeze through a narrow passage into a small cave that can hold only three or four people. This underground place, however, possesses extraordinary power. It is to the eternal soul of the Father;Baker that we owe a moment of inner healing that occurred during our journey.

It all unfolded spontaneously, yet played out as if orchestrated — as often happens when Intention enters the scene. It happened that two women from our group settled into the cave first, followed by Khoja Ahmet, who sat opposite them. One place remained, but for some reason none of the Friends dared to take it; everyone sat in the narrow passage before the cave, and only noticed how another woman from the group suddenly swept past us like a whirlwind and went straight to the remaining spot opposite Khoja Ahmet. That place seemed to be waiting for her — and so it was.

As we later learned, all three women who found themselves in the cave suffered from the same inner wound — the “orphanhood syndrome.” In childhood, each of them had been abandoned by their parents in one form or another. They had known nothing of each other’s stories before that day.

Khoja Ahmet began to recite prayers, and — whether it was the effect of his voice echoing off the cave walls, or the shared intention of the women to heal their old wounds, or the grace of the saint present in that sanctified place — in any case, all three passed within those minutes through a profound catharsis, forgiveness, and cleansing from long;held pain. I saw their eyes before and after. They were the eyes of different people. When speaking of their experience, they compared the cave to a mother’s womb, into which one enters to be born again and emerge transformed for a new life.

The remarkable episode did not end there. After meditating in the cave, we and the Friends moved into the mosque attached to the mausoleum. Khoja Ahmet began telling stories — about Somuncu Baba and others — and he lingered in particular on the story of Ayyub al;Ansari, the companion of the Prophet ;. We were all puzzled as to why. All except the three women — they understood perfectly for whom the story was intended. Ayyub had been an orphan, and in speaking of him, Khoja Ahmet urged compassion toward orphans, for we can scarcely imagine how difficult life is for them in this world.

How did our Guide, knowing nothing of the personal stories of the three women, discern their shared wound and bring them healing? It seems this will remain a secret — between him and the immortal Presence of the hidden Master – the Father;Baker.

What happened in T;rkiye was not the first time the unseen had brushed against our path. Long before Anatolia, the road had already led us into the presence of hidden saints — in Iran, in the forgotten town of Taybad, where the silence of Khorasan still shelters its abdals.

;
THE FOUR UNSEEN ABDALS


The roads and pathways of our journey through Iran in 2019 led us to Taybad, a small town almost at the very border with Afghanistan. This harsh and desolate land, where the winds blow almost constantly, has now become something like a place of exile. Once, however, it was a flourishing town through which caravans passed, and a major Sufi center.

It was here, in the 14th century, that the great mystic of Khorasan, Zaynuddin Taybadi, taught — and it was to the resting place of this saint that we were traveling for a blessing.

They say that when Tamerlane marched toward Herat, he stopped in Taybad and sent a messenger to Zaynuddin Taybadi to ask why the sheikh had not come to pay his respects to the conqueror of the world. The Sufi sent back this reply:
“I have no business with Tamerlane. If Tamerlane has business with me, let him come himself.”

Struck by the answer, the ruler was nevertheless compelled to go to the sheikh. Later he recounted that in all other encounters with those who called themselves men of knowledge, he always noticed signs of fear in them — but in the presence of Taybadi it was Tamerlane himself who felt fear.

Sheikh Taybadi made the ruler kneel and placed his hands upon his back. Tamerlane later said that it felt as though the sky had fallen upon the earth, and he was crushed between them. After receiving the sheikh’s admonitions, Tamerlane asked why Taybadi had not instructed his own sovereign, the prince of Herat, who had given himself over to forbidden pleasures. Taybadi replied: “We instructed him, but he did not listen — and God sent you against him. Now we speak to you; if you do not listen, God will appoint another over you.” (This account is given in The Reign of Timur by the 19th;century Orientalist Vasily Bartold.)

It so happened that our Guide in Iran was a man one could call a seer — or perhaps a medium. He asked that we not publish any photographs showing his face and not mention his real name, but refer to him simply as the Guide.

While I was doing silent dhikr beside the stone tomb of Master Taybadi, I saw our Guide beckoning me toward a rough platform built of simple bricks in the far corner of the mazar. I walked over, and he pointed to a plain grave in the center of the structure — a few inscriptions remained, indicating that the Sufi buried there had been a companion, perhaps even a relative, of Sheikh Taybadi. I nodded and looked at the Guide with a silent question, for I already knew he would not pull me out of dhikr without reason.

The Guide pointed to the four corners of the platform and said: “Four more are buried here, in the four corners.”

I saw no tombstones, no inscriptions.

“No, there are none,” the Guide said.

I asked how he knew someone was buried there, and he replied: “I see them. They are standing before me. These men were the true Teachers of Khorasan. No one knew who they were — they were always in the shadows —and yet they were the ones who were foremost.”

I asked whether it was possible to know their names, but the Guide answered:
“I tried to ask, but they show me that their lips are sealed.” He ran his finger across his mouth in a closing gesture.

And in that moment, a memory flared in my mind — a story from the life of the great Persian Master, Abdul;Qadir Gilani, told in Idries Shah’s Tales of the Dervishes:

Once three sheikhs — from Khorasan, Iraq, and Egypt — arrived at the lodge of Master Gilani on their way back from pilgrimage to Mecca, accompanied by their guides, rough mule;drivers. On the road, the scholars had been exhausted by the rudeness of their guides and were eager to be rid of them.

When they approached the house of Abdul;Qadir, he, contrary to his custom, came out to meet them. He exchanged no gesture of greeting with the mule;drivers. But that night, the sheikhs accidentally witnessed how Abdul;Qadir wished the mule;drivers good night, and when they respectfully took their leave, he kissed their hands.

The scholars were astonished and understood that these three, unlike themselves, were hidden sheikhs of the dervishes. They followed the mule;drivers and tried to start a conversation, but the leader of the mule;drivers rebuffed them harshly: ‘Go away with your prayers and mutterings and leave us in peace. We are simple mule;drivers and want nothing to do with this.’

Such is the nature of the hidden Sufis. Perhaps this was also the nature of the secret sheikhs of Khorasan… Sitting in the niche of the brick wall around the mazar and looking at the resting place of the four nameless Abdals — the Transformed Ones — I wondered: how many more of them have there been, passing unrecognized and unacknowledged, bearing the burden of the Work whose fruits we enjoy, though we have no understanding of its difficulty — the true Teachers of the Age?


THE MAGIC CARPET OF IRAN


Our pilgrimage through the Sufi places of Iran spanned almost the entire country — from Shiraz and Isfahan in the south to Nishapur and Mashhad in the north. If someone asked me to describe my impressions in a single phrase, I would say: Iran is magical. My friends and I often felt as though we had stepped into an Eastern fairy tale.

Iran is nothing like the country you know from the news.
Iranians are beautiful, hospitable, refined, and educated people who hold knowledge and culture in high esteem. They treat foreigners with interest but without intrusiveness, and they show genuine respect toward those of other faiths. Adab — the code of courtesy so highly valued in the East — is no empty word here. Despite our unmistakably foreign appearance, we were freely admitted into all the holy places, mosques, and mausoleums, including the very heart of Shi‘a devotion in Mashhad. (This is far from the case in many Muslim countries we have visited.) Iranians smiled at us, helped us, and even invited us into their homes.

Most certainly, while in Iran we observed local customs: the women wore headscarves and long, modest clothing, and in the mosques we put on a chador that covered the entire body except for the hands and face. Yet this caused no real discomfort. The women volunteers in the mosques even helped us put them on.

We visited the mausoleums of twelve great Sufis of Persia — among them Hafez, Attar, Omar Khayyam, and Saadi — and in each of these places we encountered an experience unlike anything else. We understood why everyone speaks with such admiration about the mosques of Shiraz: the Mirror Mosque, sparkling like a diamond with the reflected light of millions of tiny mirrors, and the Pink Mosque with its famous stained;glass windows.

We marveled at the legendary Darya;ye;Nur diamond in the Treasury of Jewels and at the royal splendor of the Golestan Palace in Tehran, and we strolled in the evening across the light;filled Naqsh;e Jahan Square in Isfahan.



It so happened that the central thread of the Iranian Pattern for us became our Guide — a man one could describe as a seer or a medium. He asked that we not publish photographs of his face and not use his real name, but refer to him simply as the Guide. Out of respect for his privacy, I will do exactly that.
The Guide was the first person to meet me at the Tehran airport. In his fifties, tall and slender, with fine features and a narrow, sun;browned face, he did not look much like the moon;faced Persians. And indeed, as it turned out, he was originally from Luristan — a mountainous region in western Iran inhabited by the Lurs, an indigenous people whose origins are still debated by scholars. The Luri languages are related to Kurdish and to certain Persian dialects.

His English is rather weak — I can barely make out the words he pronounces. He speaks a little German, having lived in Germany for quite some time, and also in Korea and Japan, where he serviced electronic equipment, for that is his worldly profession.

He told us that Christians consider him a Christian, Muslims a Muslim, and Jews a Jew, because his gift of seeing allows him to penetrate the hidden essence of any religion, and he can speak to each person in the language of their own faith. At the very center of the circle, he said, all religions are equal; the differences in understanding arise only when a person stands on the periphery, at the edge of the circle.

As far as we could observe, he always wore several silver rings with different stones on his fingers — among them agate, sapphire (or blue corundum), and emerald. When we asked why he needed so many rings, the Guide explained that a stone of a particular color helps him attune to the energy of a given religion: for example, green for Islam, blue for the Christian faith, and so on.

I asked him whether he had any connection to the Sufis. The Guide said that Sufi poets had always been very close to him, especially Attar and Hafez, and that the things revealed to him in spiritual visions by “his group” — the collective being of angels to which he belongs beyond this body — resonate deeply with what the Sufis describe in poetic language.

He told us how the eye of his soul was opened. As a young man, he felt an irresistible urge to withdraw into solitude, and eventually he did just that, finding a hermit’s refuge in the mountains of Luristan.

He spent three years in the mountains, during which he saw almost no people, yet his perception opened to communication with the spiritual beings of “his group.” He also became able to establish out;of;body contact with other people — wherever they lived — whose spiritual eyes were likewise open. At the same time, for several years he had to withstand the dark entities of the descending current, which invariably try to seize the attention of those whose spiritual vision is beginning to open.

The Guide said that a human being is, for him, an open book, and even if he sees someone for the first time, he can tell everything about that person.

The opening of the window into the world of spirits turned out to be an immense trial for him. In his case, everything happened so rapidly that one could almost call it the collapse of the wall between this world and the subtle one. According to him, his body could barely withstand the tremendous energies that shook him in the presence of the higher beings. All his organs were under terrible strain, and at times he felt that his earthly body might not survive it.

Now he seems to exist in both worlds at once. At times during our pilgrimage he would suddenly begin conveying messages “from the other side.” But I will speak about that in more detail in the chapters that follow.

…And so, we are driving through nighttime Tehran from the airport, and the Guide tells me that our arrival in Iran is not accidental, and that he had known about it from his angels since last winter. (We had indeed begun planning this trip in December, but only the staff of the travel agency helping us with visas and logistics knew about it. The agency contacted our Guide only in the summer.)
He said that when the agency approached him, he “looked at us” and decided to work with us not only as an ordinary guide, but as a Guide in the deeper sense. He added that he does not speak of his abilities to everyone he works with.
 
When I asked how he “looks at” people — by photographs? — he replied that it isn’t necessary: one can “see” the essence and character of a person knowing only their name. I asked how he perceives someone at a distance, and he explained that through the name he connects with the true being to whom that name was given in this incarnation, and an image comes to him — sometimes something abstract, like a shape or a color; something pleasant, like an angel, or repellent, like a jinn; but more often in the form of an animal or a bird.

At this point I became curious. I asked him what kind of animal he had seen me as. The Guide said, “You are not an animal — you are a bird.” “And what kind?” He smiled, “I don’t know much about birds — some kind of songbird, maybe something like a nightingale.”

From what I understood from the Guide’s later explanations during our journey, the image of birds is very common in Persian folklore in general and in Sufi poetry in particular. It serves as a symbol of those souls who have already set out — or are capable of setting out — on the path of seeking God. This symbolism reaches its fullest expression in Attar’s Mantiq al;Tayr, The Conference of the Birds, though Attar was far from the first to use it.

Birds on the Tree of Life, tasting the heavenly fruit — a motif widely found in Persian carpet designs. This piece from the Carpet Museum in Tehran, which our Guide drew our attention to, shows different species of birds arranged on different levels of the Tree of Life, just as seekers of Truth ascend through the stages of the Path, each bird symbolizing a particular quality.

According to the Guide, those whose interests belong exclusively to the earthly realm fall into seven lower levels, each symbolized by a different kind of animal (as I later discovered, this too is part of the Persian folkloric tradition).

The Guide said one evening over dinner that every person performs a particular function within the great “organism” of humanity, and that one’s role can be compared to the role of a specific part of the body. “I asked my group of angels,” he told me, “which part of the human body you belong to, and they showed me that you are part of the airway of the throat. It is an important function, because a person can survive for some time without food, but without the air, he cannot live even a few minutes.”

Through further questions from my Friends, we learned that as a person develops inwardly, their function within the human organism can change — for example, someone who was initially part of the “thigh” may, over time, become a cell of the “brain” or the “heart”.

On another occasion, the Guide spoke a little about the role his group plays in the subtle world. He said that it is a collective being whose place in the ascending spiritual hierarchy is many levels above that of humans — something like a “Divine Eye,” or auditors. Their task is to maintain balance in the subtle world of this planet between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.

I asked what they look like, if they have any form at all, and the Guide said that they have no form, but sometimes they can be seen as an eye watching you.
I remembered that long ago, for quite some time — several months or even years — whenever I closed my eyes, I would see a big eye looking straight at me. Sometimes it even seemed to blink. Later I stopped seeing it. I told the Guide about this. He nodded: “That was them.” They observe those who are awakening spiritually and, when they see the need, they find for a person a more advanced Guardian — a being from levels higher than the human.

We once had a separate conversation about Guardians, with all my Friends present. As far as I recall, the Guide said that almost everyone has Guardians from the subtle world: sometimes they are the souls of departed relatives, or of children or grandchildren not yet born. Sometimes they are beings of levels higher than the human. Guardians can change if the person changes and requires the help of a higher Guardian.

The Guide said that my current Guardian belongs to the sector of the subtle world connected with Iran, and that my appearance here is not accidental. My life;stream, he said, had incarnated in past eras in the geographical region that includes northern Iran and Central Asia, although in this life my Work is connected with North America. He also said that my Driver is four levels above the human level, yet serves as the right hand of an even higher being of the seventh level.

What the Guide said did not surprise me; rather, it confirmed what had already been partially revealed to me over the past years — that angelic presence, unearthly beautiful, which appears in meditation, truly bears features characteristic of Persians. I asked the Guide whether I could know his name, but after thinking for a few seconds he replied, “It would not help him in his work,” and the subject was closed.

One day, after visiting the mausoleum of the great Persian poet and storyteller Ferdowsi in Tus, Khorasan, the Guide led us to a small jewelry shop near the mausoleum. There he pointed out a small silver ring with a transparent faceted stone of a yellowish hue and said that I could work with it — that it would help me establish a better connection with my Guardian. The ring, with its inset stone, looked like an eye gazing at me. It fit me perfectly, and I bought it on the spot.

(Although the Guide called the stone an alexandrite, as I later discovered, judging by the modest price it was more likely corundum with traces of chromium, which — like the rare alexandrite — changes color under different lighting. When I took the ring out at the hotel later, to my surprise the stone was completely green, and in daylight the next day it turned pink. Now, as I write these lines, the stone lies before me — it is pink. I wear the ring during meditation, and it truly helps me feel and perceive the Presence of my Guardian more clearly.)

Back in the jewelry shop, the Guide told me the name of his angel;Guardian. I asked why he had shared it with me, and whether he wanted me to work with him. The Guide replied that the decision was entirely mine, and that he was not urging me in any way, because it is not a simple choice. If I wished, he could help me establish a connection with “their group,” but it would be “like receiving a passport,” because from that moment I would become part of their Work.

What this Work is, and why our Guide said that once a person becomes “the earthly body of an angelic group,” they no longer belong to their own self, we came to understand in Mashhad. Upon arriving there, we immediately went to the shrine of Imam Reza — the holiest site for Iran’s Shiites. We were met by an English;speaking volunteer from the community of shrine custodians, while the Guide, saying he had something to attend to and would explain everything later, slipped away.

We spent about an hour walking through the shrine with the very polite and pleasant volunteer, for the Imam Reza complex is vast and consists of many courtyards that resemble public squares more than anything else. When we finally returned to the hotel, our Guide reappeared and explained to me where he had gone.

It turned out that in every city he visits, he must find and quietly bestow a blessing on at least five people indicated to him by his “group.” I asked what it means to “bestow a blessing.” The Guide replied that it is something like a charge of grace, for which he serves as the conduit between the angels and human beings. His Guardians show him what the person looks like — whether it is a man or a woman — and where they can be found.

That is why our Guide had spent all that time walking through the shrine, searching for the people described by the angels. If it was a man, he would brush against him as if by accident. If it was a woman, he would simply stand near her for a while.

Then I remembered that when we were at the mausoleum of Ferdowsi, an Iranian family had placed a very small child directly on the marble tomb (since it is believed that the saint’s grace descends upon the infant and grants good fortune), and our Guide, who was standing nearby, also blessed the child. I asked whether this had been part of the “daily plan” of his Work, and he smiled and said that it was.

I said that I did not feel ready to “receive the passport” right now — perhaps because I cannot set aside the Work I am already engaged in, the Work that demands nearly the full measure of my strength. This was not a complaint, but simply a sober assessment of the resources my earthly being has at this moment. To do what he does, one must be prepared, and perhaps one day I will rise to that level as well. Our Guide understood perfectly what I meant; he did not object.
He also said that my coming to Iran was connected with a certain task in which his group hoped for my help: it concerned the restoration of the balance of light in North America. I asked whether I needed to take any specific action, but the Guide said that I simply needed to be a wall of light and continue the work I am already doing within my Tradition.

My Friends asked whether he could answer their questions, and the Guide said that he could — but since he always speaks what he sees, without any softening, it can sometimes be difficult for a person to hear the answers.

Truth can be heavy. There is a reason why the future is hidden from us: sometimes it is so that we are not demoralized by fear or disappointment, so that our hands do not fall. Sometimes it is because, by changing ourselves, we can change our future. God does not give us a burden beyond our strength, and there is always hope. All one needs is to be a wall of light.


THE LESSON OF ATTAR


The land of Nishapur — the ancient capital of Khorasan and now a small, quiet town — gave birth to two of Iran’s great treasures: its precious turquoise, and two Sufi poets, Omar Khayyam and Farid al-Din Attar. Naturally, when planning our pilgrimage to Iran, Nishapur was the first place we thought of… and it did not disappoint.

A hot October day lay over Nishapur as we stepped into the pleasant coolness of the mausoleum, built in the 13th–14th centuries. In the small octagonal chamber beneath its “onion;shaped” dome stood a tomb of black stone. Our Guide told us that this stone (now enclosed in glass for protection) had been in the mausoleum from the very beginning, since the time of the Mongol rulers of Khorasan.

After sitting for a while in silence and meditation, I stepped outside, wanting to take a few more photographs before we left. Near the exit our Guide was waiting. I was about to ask him to take a picture of me against the backdrop of the mausoleum, but he spoke first: “By the way, Attar asked why you still haven’t read his Conference of the Birds and his Memorial of the Saints (Tazkirat al;Awliya).”

I was stunned. Attar asked? 

True, those books are Attar’s two major works, and I had worked with them while writing my blog notes about this great Sufi — but indeed, I had never read either one in full. The Guide could not have known this. No one could have. Except Attar…

“Did you see him?” I asked. My heart was pounding with excitement, and at the same time my ears burned with shame at my superficiality, at my unworthiness to write about Attar.

“Yes,” the Guide replied. “While you were sitting around the tomb, he appeared right at the spot where the black stone stands, and pointing his finger at you said: ‘Ask her why she still hasn’t read Mantiq al;Tayr and the Tazkirat.’ His Essence revealed itself as a tall man in a long robe of brown — the color of Truth (Haqq).”

I asked whether Attar’s spirit had been angry with me, but the Guide replied that Beings of such magnitude are not subject to human emotions like anger or irritation. “Attar is a Master — he is all;loving and compassionate. How could he be angry with you? He simply wanted you to hear him, to read his books from beginning to end. He also said that on page 128 of Mantiq al;Tayr there is a message for you. It speaks of a task whose resolution is important for your progress on the Path.”

A tremor of excitement ran through me. “But which Mantiq al;Tayr? There are so many editions, in different languages…”

I pressed the Guide, but he only spread his hands, suggesting that Attar must have meant the edition I would be able to read — perhaps the English translation of the poem.

I turned toward the mausoleum and, placing my palms together against my chest, promised the Master that I would fulfill his request, if it were God’s will and help.

When I returned home, I found and studied the best available translation of Mantiq al;Tayr — the one by the British scholar of Persian literature Dick Davis and his Iranian wife Afkham Darbandi. Naturally, when the book arrived in the mail, the first thing I did was open to page 128. There I found the story of the Phoenix…

In many traditions, including the Christian one, the Phoenix is a symbol of immortality, resurrection, and renewal. Attar retells this ancient, universal legend through the lens of Persian folklore:

“They say that in distant India there is a magical bird that lives for a thousand years. Its wingspan is immense, and in its long beak are many openings, like the holes of a flute. And when the Phoenix sings, its beak turns the currents of air into a hundred melodies that enchant every living creature. One day Pythagoras heard the Phoenix’s song, understood the foundations of harmony, and created the laws of music.

When the Phoenix’s lifespan draws to its end, the bird — knowing in advance that its transition is near — prepares a great pyre of branches, seats itself upon its summit, and sings a song that plunges all living beings into profound sorrow.”
And then the climactic moment of the Phoenix legend:

The flames rise up with hundred;tongued embrace,
They swallow wood and phoenix in one blaze.
A body, once so full of strength and fire,
Turns into ash and coal upon the pyre…
The fire dies. But — suddenly — from within,
A phoenix;child lifts up his head again!

Passing through the trial of fire, from the transfigured lower nature is born the Philosopher’s Stone of the immortal spirit. This is the task of tasks for every human soul. Whatever other goals life may place before us, this one surpasses them all in significance. Attar crowns the story of the Phoenix with these lines (as translated by Davis & Darbandi):

All that is born must die and be undone,
but we must soften death’s hard neck, my son.
You may have mastered every task on earth —
none is more difficult along the Way than this.

We can only guess what Attar meant by the words “soften death’s hard neck”, but one recalls that the three principal stages of advancement on the Path are described by Sufis as processes of “death,” each followed by a new “birth.” When dervishes say, “Die before you die,” they mean that fear, pride, greed, lust, envy, anger — everything that keeps us bound in the nets of illusion — must wither away.

If self;will and self;love do not die within us, then it is the soul that begins to die instead — and love — quietly, imperceptibly, day after day. We make our choice between one or the other every single day.

The nature of the reborn Phoenix — like our essence — is pure light, untouched by fire or time. The One who appeared to us in Attar’s mausoleum was not a “shadow of Attar,” but the light of Attar, the great Being who possessed the “language of the birds.” And as the 15th;century Sufi poet Alisher Navoi wrote in his brilliant Turkic rendering of Mantiq al;Tayr:

The hidden meaning, once concealed from me, 
I voiced to others in the birds’ own key. 
And any bird of insight, hearing this speech,
Will grasp all that its words are meant to teach.

;
DERVISH ALI IRFANI


On our first day in Iran, I asked our Guide whether we might meet any Persian dervishes. He replied that, in the current climate, it was better not to utter the very word “Sufis” unless absolutely necessary. A few years earlier, anti;government protests had taken place here, involving one of the groups that called itself Sufi. Whether these people were true Sufis or not, their actions resulted in all Sufi orders in Iran falling under an unspoken ban. Of course, dervishes still exist in Iran, but establishing contact with them has become extremely difficult — much like in Central Asia during Soviet times.

What the Guide told us confirmed the warnings of our Iranian Friends living in the West, who had advised us not to speak openly about our interest in Sufism with strangers, but to say instead that we were admirers of Persian mystical poetry — which is exactly what we did.

Nevertheless, as the Guide assured me on the drive from the airport, an inner voice was telling him that we would meet Sufis somewhere in the north — in Semnan, perhaps in Bastam. He did not know precisely where, when, or whom, but he said he was certain that the meeting itself would take place.

The Guide’s intuition did not fail him: we met the dervish Ali Irfani in Kharakan, not far from Bastam, at the mausoleum of the 10th–11th;century Sufi Abul;Hasan Kharqani. Abul;Hasan Kharqani was one of the most mystical figures of Khorasan. He was illiterate, yet the greatest minds of his age came to him for guidance and counsel — Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Nasir Khusraw, and Abu Sa‘id Abu’l;Khair — as well as the powerful of this world, such as Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni.

The story that follows is about a man of incomparable spiritual steadfastness whom we met at the mausoleum of Sheikh Kharqani, and who continues his Sufi work in our time.

We drove to Kharakan early in the morning, and the Guide said, “My angels have conveyed that today we will meet someone from among the Sufis — perhaps in Kharakan, perhaps in Bastam.” When I asked where and whom, he had no answer.
He dictated to us a prayer formula — a dhikr — which had been given to him by the Guardians specifically for meditation at the tomb of Abul;Hasan Kharqani. It was a strange language — neither Arabic nor Persian. The Guide told us that angels transmit their messages in the “language of birds,” something closer to music and only faintly resembling human speech, so one must search for the closest possible approximation within the phonetics of earthly languages.

To reach the mausoleum of Sheikh Kharqani, we had to climb a set of steps from the road. A small building with an open terrace, where the marble tomb stood, appeared at the end of an alley, half;hidden behind overgrown cypress trees.

The day began quiet and full of sunlight. After passing through the inner room onto the terrace facing east, we settled around the tomb, lifting our faces to the gentle rays of the sun.

For some time there was no one on the terrace but the seven of us. Perhaps it lasted quite a while, but in the blissful forgetfulness in which I found myself, the sense of time had been switched off. Bliss came in waves, matching the rhythm of the dhikr given to us by the Guide, and with each wave it grew, until it seemed that the ninth wave would sweep away the last remnants of my attachment to reality… In such moments you care neither for what came before nor for what will come after, abiding in the eternity of the “here and now.” All you can wish is that it never ends.

“What is the highest happiness?” once asked Master Kharqani — and immediately answered, “A heart in which the remembrance of God resounds without ceasing.”
As I was doing the dhikr, I bent toward the tomb twice, and each time, touching the warm marble with my forehead, I clearly saw the same image: a man in a dervish’s robe and cap, with a broad, round face, black hair, and thick eyebrows above lively, radiant dark eyes. The face was young — or perhaps its features simply did not belong to time.

I was surprised and told our Friends about it. At that moment our Guide approached the terrace — until then he had been standing by the entrance — and said that he saw a dervish walking toward the mausoleum: “I told you someone would come today!” We noticed an elderly man in a dervish cap entering the mausoleum, but we did not manage to see him clearly.

Finishing our meditation, we headed toward the exit and saw the very same dervish — a man of about sixty — sitting in a corner near the mihrab, as if he had been waiting for us. His face was exactly the same as the one I had seen when touching my forehead to the tomb, only older by some forty years.

The dervish spoke to us in German. We replied in English, and so a conversation began. He asked whether all of us were Muslims. We told him that among us were Christians. It turned out that the dervish’s name was Ali Irfani, and that he had been performing a kind of voluntary service at this mausoleum for several years, bearing witness to tawhid — the Divine Unity. Before that, Ali had lived for quite a long time in Germany and in the US, which explained his fluency in foreign languages. Having retired from his work, he returned to his homeland in Kharakan: he had been drawn back, called by the spirit of Master Abul;Hasan.
Dervish Ali can easily say, “I do not believe that God speaks Arabic,” which naturally provokes indignation among clerics who have forgotten that the great saint Kharqani himself ordered these words to be written at the entrance to his khanaqah: “Give bread to every needy person who comes to this abode, and do not ask about their faith.”

I ask Ali Irfani how he prays and what practices he follows. He looks straight into my eyes, his expression and his feeling completely open, without a trace of calculation — like a child. Without hesitation he answers, “My prayer has no words. In my soul there are only three words to God: ‘I love You.’ I have no practices; I am empty. I sit and watch how He turns this world.” He looks at me again and repeats, as if wanting me to truly take in his words: “I simply observe how He turns this world.”

Ali said that it makes no difference to God what words one uses to address Him, because He hears what is in a person’s heart. If one prays sincerely, the language of the prayer does not matter — and to confirm his words, Ali suddenly began to sing the Our Father in German, aloud.

The caretaker of the mausoleum, standing by the entrance, glanced at him with disapproval. Five minutes later he asked us to leave the building, since cameras were installed throughout the grounds and inside the shrine, and he feared the reaction of fundamentalists.

Apparently, his fears were not unfounded. Two years earlier, Ali Irfani’s house had been burned down, and his wife had died in the fire. Ali believes this was done by those who disliked his statements.

(When we complain about the trials and difficulties sent to us on the dervish Path, it might be worth remembering those whose cross is incomparably heavier than ours — and instead of pitying ourselves, offer a prayer for them…)

Abul;Hasan Kharqani, when asked what the Sufi path is, replied: “A river fed by three springs: one is abstinence, another is compassion, and the third is non;attachment to the creatures of God.”

By abstinence he meant, of course, not only an ascetic life of poverty — though that is precisely the way of life of the dervish Ali Irfani, whose clothing is worn through in places and whose dwelling is a shelter for the poor. “Abstinence” is above all the renunciation of self;will and the submission of the ego to the Higher Will, however it may manifest.

Ali’s compassion is always at the service of those who come to him seeking advice on various matters of life. I asked him how he knows the answers. The dervish replied that no one knows the answers except God. Therefore he enters a state of non;attachment — freeing the mind from everything except the Creator — and then the answer comes to him. As Sheikh Kharqani once said: “Whatever exists in the universe also exists in your heart. You simply must learn the ability to see it.”
When a person becomes free of selfhood, he becomes empty — and then the voice of his heart begins to speak.

Ali said that in the morning he had been washing his clothes when a persistent thought came to him that he must go to the shrine. Dropping everything, he quickly got ready and hurried there — and upon arriving, he saw us and understood that this meeting was not accidental. By that moment, none of us had any doubt of it either.

As we parted, the dervish blessed all of us, and we wished him grace in all his endeavors. We also wished him to remain at his post and to keep the resting place of the saint Kharqani alive for all seekers drawn to his light.

May the spark of compassion that arises in the heart of anyone who reads about the dervish Ali Irfani be sent to him as support in his difficult Work.

;
ZURKHANE


Sufi training can be found in almost any form, yet among the many expressions taken by Sufi Schools, the Way of the Warrior is mentioned least of all. Public imagination is so conditioned by the image of the poor fakir or the whirling dervish that, when I once remarked in a discussion that Sufis had formed chivalric orders, someone responded that one should not apply Western terminology to Eastern practices.

But in fact, the situation appears to have been quite the opposite: there are studies that consider the Templars and Hospitallers of Western Europe to be heirs to the traditions of Eastern schools. These early Sufi chivalric schools were called futuwwa (from the Arabic fata, a noble young man), and their outward function was the protection of caravans of pilgrims traveling to holy places.

The beginnings of the futuwwa movement are linked to the name of Ali ibn Abu Talib, the cousin, son;in;law, and companion of the Prophet Muhammad ;. The code of honor that later became the foundation of the ideal of the noble knight first appeared among the followers of futuwwa and was based on the qualities Ali displayed in defending against enemies. Among these were: refusal to act out of anger or resentment, compassion toward the defeated, courage, self;sacrifice, spiritual purity, and care for the weak, for children, and for women.

Beyond Sufi communities, the ideas of futuwwa have been preserved — at least in part — in certain Eastern schools of martial arts. Even before our trip to Iran, we knew that the original tradition of zurkhaneh (“houses of strength”) was still alive in this country, with rituals and terminology that evoke both futuwwa and the Sufi schools. Naturally, we wanted to visit one of these houses.

It was a warm October evening in Isfahan. My Friends and I walked for a long time through the dark, winding alleys of the old city, following our Guide. He had arranged with the murshid — the “master” of the zurkhaneh — that we would be allowed to attend a training session. (As we later learned, there were usually no sessions on that day of the week, but two athletes and the murshid had come especially for us.)

The Guide told us that in his youth he himself had trained in one of these “houses of strength.” In earlier times, women were not allowed into the zurkhaneh, since the athletes trained bare;chested, wearing only loincloths. In recent years, however, the ban had been lifted — though the athletes were now required to wear T;shirts and short trousers. So we went as a full group, including the women.

At last we found the address, where the murshid was already waiting for us at the entrance. The doorway of a zurkhaneh is traditionally made low — about a meter and a half — so that anyone entering must bow, remembering humility. Shoes are also always left at the entrance, though as guests from afar we were told we could keep them on. Still, out of respect for our hosts, we removed our shoes and descended a narrow staircase into the main chamber where the training takes place.

The walls of a zurkhaneh are usually covered with portraits of famous athletes and Sufi saints — always including images of the Persian folk hero Rustam, the Prophet Ali, and the Sufi Master Pury;;ye Vali - the 13th;century Sufi Master Mahmud Khwarizmi from Urgench. He is regarded as a model to emulate not only by athletes in Persian and Azerbaijani zurkhaneh, but also by wrestlers in T;rkiye. It is perhaps no coincidence that zurkhaneh, founded by a Sufi, bore a strong resemblance to dervish centers.

The musical and poetic accompaniment to the athletes’ training strongly resembles the devotional ceremonies of dervishes. In addition, the relationships between junior and senior athletes are built on the principle of brotherhood, and many of the terms used in zurkhaneh practice echo Sufi terminology: for example, murshid (master) or fakhr (poverty, spiritual destitution).

Pury;;ye Vali is believed to have been both a mystic and a poet, and a number of verses are attributed to him, including these:

Who longs for grace must first be taught to bend;
The water feeding life lies lower than the earth it tends.

This couplet contains several layers of imagery, one of which points to the method of the School founded by Pury;;ye Vali. The fact is that very few Sufi communities used a “bottom;up” approach to training — a method of educating the mind through the body.

It is also possible that Pury;;ye Vali’s couplet alludes to the physical structure of the zurkhaneh, where the athletes’ training space is always located below floor level. This space is called the gowd — an octagonal arena about a meter deep. Inside it, a special energetic atmosphere and microclimate with a stable temperature are created. The gowd is surrounded by benches for spectators, where we took our seats.

The sacred center of the zurkhaneh is the raised platform where the murshid sits, setting the rhythm and tempo of the exercises with his chant and drumbeat. He usually recites, in a melodic cadence, verses by Saadi, Hafez, Rumi, Ferdowsi, and other Sufi poets of Persia, as well as masnavi couplets composed specifically for the zurkhaneh, known as “the wrestlers’ flower.” And although it is the murshid who sets the tempo, he takes his cue from the senior athlete of the group, who stands at the center of the arena and, together with the murshid, guides the flow of the session.

Training begins with a warm;up, followed by exercises with wooden clubs, each weighing 20-30 kg, and then with metal shields, which are lifted and lowered from a lying position. The murshid signals the transition from one exercise to the next with a strike of a small bell. Then the athletes, circling the arena, swing above their heads a bow;shaped instrument with metal chains attached. The “bow” is heavy as well, weighing up to twenty kilograms. After all this comes the spinning practice, reminiscent of the dervish ritual of semah. Until the 1940s, the culmination of zurkhaneh training was a wrestling match, but this tradition has not survived into the present day.

The drumbeat sets the pace of the exercises, placing the athletes within fairly strict limits and forcing them to exert more effort than they would on their own. A person naturally tends to spare himself, to give his body a little indulgence. But when the murshid follows the lead of the most experienced senior athlete, the younger participants must keep up with someone stronger, placing their bodies in a situation of challenge. This compels them to draw upon all the resources of the organism, including those that are usually diverted to maintaining the programs of the nafs — the ego.

In such moments, athletes can reach what sports psychologists call “being in the flow” or “entering the zone.” The distinguishing features of this state are intensely heightened concentration on the task at hand, immersion in the present moment, and the loss of reflective self;awareness.

In other words, when the process is structured correctly, students of the zurkhaneh — and of other martial arts — gain access to a temporary state of mental and emotional detachment, a state that might take years to achieve through ordinary meditation.

This is the key to the Way of the Warrior: a warrior freed from the chains of the ego is invincible, because he becomes capable of inhuman efficiency. Passive actions rarely induce the flow state; what is required is active engagement and complete immersion in it. For a certain type of person, therefore, the path “through the body” is the only possible one.

A group “flow state” differs noticeably from an individual one, because by its very nature it depends on the quality of interaction within the group. Collective flow becomes possible when people engage in a shared activity — as in the case of a musical ensemble or a sports team. And the athletes of the zurkhaneh, like dervishes during their devotional ceremony, are also examples of such groups.
What we witnessed in the zurkhaneh can hardly be called a simple athletic training session; it would be more accurate to describe it as a liturgy of a special kind. In this complex ritual, body, text, and music work together, generating a palpable energy — both physical and more subtle, psychic.
…I remember clearly how, entering the zurkhaneh after a long day of walking in the heat, we could barely stand from exhaustion, too tired even to speak. Yet when we left — after warmly thanking our hosts — we were surprisingly invigorated, animatedly discussing what we had seen. I believe all of this was thanks to the energy that seemed to arise “out of nowhere,” created through the ancient methods of the “house of strength.”


KHALIL


The ancient land of the Maghreb is full of treasures. A casual traveler may pass by without ever knowing they exist. Like the plain, windowless walls of the medina—the old city—the Maghreb guards its treasures from idle and restless eyes. Only for those driven by a true thirst of the heart does the cherished key open the door—into a place where, beyond a dark passage, a space of light unfolds, and the traveler stands still, spellbound by the play of colors and whimsical forms worthy of A Thousand and One Nights.

For us, the key to the treasures of the Maghreb was our Friend and Guide, a Moroccan Sufi named Khalil.

Khalil was born in Fez, the most Sufi of Moroccan cities. Moroccans will tell you that in Fez, everyone is a Sufi. This is surely an exaggeration, yet the indescribable spirit of the dervishes is felt in this city as nowhere else in Morocco. In this, Fez resembles Konya and Bukhara - places permeated with the subtle essence, the Baraka, of innumerable Sufi saints.

Most of the residents of Fez are not Arabs, as is commonly believed, but Berbers - the indigenous people of North Africa. Our Friend Khalil is half Berber, half descendant of Spanish and Portuguese Moors who settled in the Maghreb during the era of the Andalusian Arab dynasties.

According to Khalil, genetically the Berbers are close to the most ancient inhabitants of Europe—the Basques and Celts—and linguistically they are related to the peoples north of the Sahara. Dark-skinned and dark-haired, Berbers often resemble southern Slavs, though one occasionally encounters fair-skinned, blue-eyed people among them.

After the Arab conquest of North Africa, most Berbers embraced Islam while preserving many of their ancestral pagan traditions. Many followed the Sufi Path, known here as tasawwuf. Followers of the Persian Master Abdul-Qadir Gilani – the founder of the Qadiri order - appeared in the Maghreb in the 14th century, and later here came the “second wave” of North African Sufi orders—Shadhili, Darkawi, and Tijani.

Khalil’s family had belonged to the Qadiri order for many generations. His grandfather was a prosperous landowner who donated a significant portion of his income to the dervish community to which he belonged. According to Khalil, no one ever formally taught him Sufi practices such as dhikr—the remembrance of the Divine Name. He simply participated in them with the older members of the family and their friends, also dervishes, who often visited their home. Every week, his grandfather and father took Khalil to the zawiya—the place where Sufis gather for the Thursday hadra.

For those raised within the Sufi Tradition – unlike those who, like me, sought it in adulthood – the remembrance of God is not an effort but as natural as breathing. After long days of traveling, when we asked Khalil to do dhikr with us, “if it wouldn’t trouble him, of course,” he would reply with his usual dazzling smile: “How could dhikr be a trouble? Is there anything better a person can do here and now than remember God?”

By the age of twelve, Khalil could recite the entire Quran by heart. The art of hafiz - the mastery of reciting the suras with the proper tone of voice at the right moment - was part of his upbringing.

Khalil’s Arabic, like that of all Moroccans, is distinctive; its sound differs from classical Arabic even to an untrained ear. Like many languages that developed in relative isolation, the Arabic brought to the Maghreb by conquerors from Arabia in the 7th century has preserved many archaic features. Therefore, according to Khalil, the prayers recited in the Maghreb are much closer to their original sound.

I cannot evaluate this claim as a linguist, but the effect of the suras recited by Khalil was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I believe the secret lies in the special pronunciation of the long Arabic “aa,” when the sound does not move outward but reverberates inward, somewhere in the solar plexus. This “aa” is pronounced not so much with the throat as with the core of the body, and it sounds almost like “o.” In the very first minute of our dhikr, this inner vibration, resonating through my body, created a sensation as if my whole being was opened from within like with a key. A dull ache appeared in the place associated with the subtle center of Sufi practice—the latifa ruhiyya—yet the sensation was not unpleasant. It was familiar; I had felt it once before, fifteen years earlier, when this center spontaneously activated.

The effect of dhikr cannot be described in words; it must be heard and felt while sitting beside someone who knows how to pronounce the Sound correctly. Even an audio recording cannot capture it fully, because part of its impact is inaudible, though clearly perceptible. Its nature is different from the vibration of air striking the eardrums—it is the purified resonance of the dhikr Master transmitted through the entire body to its subtlest part. This vibration is the key that opens the heart’s treasury like the magical “Open, Sesame!”

The sound of dhikr is like a wooden beam striking a bell and setting it into motion. If other bells tuned to the same frequency are nearby, they too begin to ring.

Each of us has a well;tuned bell within, responding unfailingly to the right frequency. This resonating bell is our body. The body perfectly distinguishes false gold from true, an imitator from a Master of Sound. An imitator may deceive the mind or the feelings, but they cannot deceive the body. Once the body has tasted this healing and inspiring vibration, it will crave it again and again. Dhikr becomes a need – the same impulse that makes birds greet the morning with song.

Speaking of birds… One morning in the garden of a hotel in Marrakesh, my Friends and I watched how the sound of our dhikr with Khalil prompted all the birds on the surrounding trees to begin singing at once.

It was not so much singing as a powerful, continuous wave of sound they sustained for the duration of our dhikr, stopping only when we stopped. Khalil, smiling from ear to ear as always, said there was nothing surprising about it, because if one remembers God in the proper way, there is no being that would not want to join.

…At the age of sixteen, Khalil left Morocco for North America to study anthropology, and he remained on that continent for thirty;four years—hence his impeccable English and his unique position as someone who understands both Eastern and Western ways of thinking. For some time he also lived in Canada and even knew quite a bit about the city where I now reside.

Because of this extraordinary combination—his vast knowledge of history, psychology, anthropology, and even physiognomy and palmistry – together with his sharp mind and intuition, travelling with Khalil was endlessly fascinating. His wise Sufi heart, which recognizes no division of nationality or confession, enveloped us in a palpable sense of Unity whenever we were with him.

“Khalil” is our Friend’s Sufi name, not the one he was given at birth. As he told us, at a certain moment on the Sufi path, the Guides reveal to each dervish their true name, and that name becomes their authentic vibrational signature. In Arabic, Khalil means “friend, companion, the one who is always near.” Another meaning of the word khalil is “inner essence, heart.” Our Friend shared with us the story of how he received his Sufi name.

During his years in America, Khalil studied with a group of followers of a Sufi sheikh and writer of Iranian origin named Hossein Nasr. At a certain point in his training, the time came when the muqaddam - the person authorized by the sheikh to teach others - told him that he had passed on everything he could, and if Khalil wished to go further, he should seek a teacher in the East. Khalil asked where exactly he should look, and the answer he received was that the circumstances of his life would lead him in the right direction.

Khalil became attentive to such signs, and after some time he indeed received what he took to be an indication. At that time, he owned a shop selling Oriental goods, and one of the visitors—a Syrian—invited him to come to Damascus to look at samples of small carpets and possibly make a business deal.

And so Khalil found himself in Damascus. When he located the address of his new acquaintance, he discovered that directly across from it stood a Sufi zawiya. The coincidence struck Khalil, and since there was still plenty of time before the scheduled meeting, he decided to step inside. Strangely enough, the zawiya was empty at that moment, and as he sat down in a corner, Khalil instantly slipped into a trance-like state.

He was not asleep, yet he perceived what was being transmitted to him in vivid images. He saw a very tall figure in a dazzling white robe, with a green turban on its head. The being’s voice sounded inside his mind: “Khalil, wake up!” He was startled to be addressed by a name that was not his—Khalil was the name of his brother, who had died in an accident many years earlier. He said to the tall being, “I am not Khalil; that is my brother’s name.” “No, you are Khalil. From now on, this will be your name,” the voice insisted. The being also revealed other things to him about his future.

When Khalil emerged from this strange half;sleep, he discovered that he was no longer alone in the zawiya—the muqaddam, the person responsible for the place, had arrived. He approached Khalil immediately and asked where he came from, since his Western clothing made it clear he was not a local.

As it turned out, the muqaddam had also received a vision that very night, telling him that he would speak with someone from afar and that this meeting would be of special significance. That was why he addressed Khalil so directly. They spoke for a long time, and as a result, Khalil was accepted into the community of Damascus Sufis, where he studied for several months and then returned every six months to maintain his connection with the sheikh.

After Khalil told us this story, we naturally became curious about the role that dreams and visions play in the Tradition in which he grew up. We received an intriguing answer, and I would like to share it here. Khalil explained that visions differ greatly from ordinary dreams. The latter are the mind’s way of processing impressions of the day, earlier emotional imprints or psychological traumas, and signals from the physical body—including those that may hint at hidden illnesses. In other words, they arise from the emotional, mental, or physical layers of a person.

Visions, however, belong to an entirely different category, for they come from the essence of a person - from their Higher Self. They do not occur often, but when they do, they can be so vivid that they remain in memory for a long time—in some cases forever.

Visions most often come before dawn—between midnight and four in the morning. A person always wakes up from a vision and remembers clearly what they saw and felt. According to Khalil, the most important aspect is not the images themselves, but the feeling that accompanies them. If you cannot decipher the meaning of the images yet wake with a bright and peaceful feeling, then the message conveyed by your Higher Self is positive. And vice versa. The message lies in the feeling.

After Khalil had spent several years with the Damascus Sufis, the sheikh granted him the right to serve as a muqaddam—one who assists in guiding other seekers. Yet until recently, Khalil did not feel an inner calling to begin such work.
Only in the last few years, after returning to Morocco, did an image begin to take shape within him: the idea of creating a Sufi center in a pure and beautiful place in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, where seekers could come for meditation or shared spiritual practice. On the road from Marrakesh to Fez, Khalil showed us these places - covered with centuries;old cedar forests, where one can find the caves of holy hermits who once spent their prayerful solitude there.

When we said goodbye to Khalil, we sincerely wished him success in his undertaking, “planting a seed” of donations for the future Sufi center. According to the latest news we received from him, this sanctuary is now very close to welcoming its first guests.

;
LILA AISSAWA


What Khalil— our key to the treasure house of the Maghreb — revealed to us is not always accessible to the eyes of outsiders, and sometimes not even to the locals. We found ourselves in places where tourists are never taken, and became participants in events that admit no outside spectators.

One such event is the Lila Aissawa — the Thursday;night Sufi ceremony of ecstatic devotion. I will share what I learned from Khalil and what I was able to discover myself.

Aissawa (also spelled Issawa or Isawiyya) is a Sufi brotherhood whose followers are found throughout Morocco and other countries of North Africa. The name of the order comes from its founder, the 16th;century Sufi saint Sidi Mohammed ben A;ssa, also known as the “Perfect Sheikh” — Sheikh Al;Kamil. The spiritual center of the brotherhood is the zawiya in the city of Meknes, Morocco.

Lila means “night.” This is the name given to the ritual of entering trance through a combination of rhythm and chanting — a practice the Aissawa perform for spiritual healing, purification, and, when needed, exorcism.

It must be said that traditional communities had a remarkably clear understanding of what we would now call psychological hygiene.

The Aissawa, like the malamati, effectively “shake out” negative emotions, as well as mental and physical tension accumulated in their communities (in traditional worldview, these dense clusters of energy are personified as “jinn”). They do it through a combination of rhythm, movement, and prayer. A well;coordinated taifa — a group of Aissawa dervishes — serves as a conduit for the Baraka of the brotherhood’s founder, Sheikh Al Kamil. Through this positive force, they neutralize the negative energy released by people during the process of purification.

Moroccan Sufism is a very distinctive phenomenon. A taifa of Maghrebi dervishes is, in essence, a musical ensemble. Elsewhere, Sufi groups gather for suhbat (spiritual conversation), collective readings, devotional ceremonies, meditation, or even for shared work such as building or cooking. In the Maghreb, they make music. The primary instruments of training and spiritual work in Moroccan tariqas are sound and rhythm. Instead of the usual suhbat (communion), khilvat (retreat), or muraqaba (contemplation), a Maghrebi group of dervishes plays and sings.
The person appointed to lead the group — called the muqaddam — is both the most experienced and the most skilled musician. He must master all the instruments, sing well, and know the movements of the sacred dances. To become a muqaddam, a dervish must spend many years learning not only spiritual practices but all of the above. His qualification must then be confirmed by the council of Aissawa elders. Only after that may he guide others and accept new students — khaddama (literally “servants”) — into the group.

The muqaddam always stands at the center of the group, setting the rhythm on the double drum called the tabla. To his right is the dhakkar, the one who leads the dhikr.

The muqaddam directs the entire Lila ceremony from beginning to end, plays the leading part, and gives signals to the other participants when to enter, stop playing, or change instruments. The second most important person in the group is the dhakkar — the one who leads the dhikr.

There are usually between twelve and twenty students in a group. At our ceremony there were only five musicians, as the modest size of our riad — a traditional guesthouse in the very heart of the Fez medina — did not allow for more. The older and more experienced members of the group are called fakirs; they no longer play instruments, but they do participate in the dhikr. The group’s gatherings take place at the muqaddam’s home, which becomes the zawiya for that particular community.

When the dervishes have “sung themselves together,” when they have reached unity and harmony and become a single whole, they are a taifa — a link in the chain of transmission, a conduit for the Baraka of the order’s founder, Sheikh Al Kamil. The servants are ready to begin their service.

The ceremony known as Lila Aissawa, or Lila Sufiya — “the Sufi night” — is held at the invitation of individual families or neighborhood communities, and it truly can last the entire night, from ten in the evening until dawn. In our case it was shorter, lasting from nine until midnight. The ceremony usually consists of three parts: the dhikr, the “expulsion of the jinn” (mluk), and the climax of the night — the hadra. Each part typically lasts about two hours (ours were limited to one).

The Sufi night begins with the dhikr. Each taifa has its own unique repertoire of spiritual poems — qasidas — recited to rhythmic music. Most of these poems were composed in the 17th century, based on mystical formulas revealed to Sheikh Al Kamil. In essence, they are sacred hymns praising the Almighty, the Prophet ;, the founder of the brotherhood, and other saints — may God sanctify their secret. The qasidas, originally chanted by poets, later came to be accompanied by rhythmic instrumental music, which helped them spread and become beloved throughout the Maghreb.

At the heart of Aissawa dhikr music — as in all North African music — lies an intricate pattern of polyrhythm: several different rhythms layered on top of one another. This pattern may seem chaotic only to an untrained listener. In fact, the polyrhythms of the Aissawa and other Maghrebi orders are built on a sophisticated system rooted in the interplay of the masculine and feminine principles, and in the principle of complementarity.

The musicians of the taifa are divided into two complementary parts: one plays the rhythmic lines known as “feminine,” the other performs the “masculine” ones. Identical instruments are paired. One musician plays a fixed, unchanging, repetitive rhythm — this is called the “mother of rhythm,” the hajjiya. Upon this foundation, the second musician “embroiders” a complex rhythmic pattern, shifting and full of improvisation. This part is called zwak, which literally means “embroidery.”

Only one musician is capable of playing both the masculine and feminine parts simultaneously on the double drum, the tabla — the muqaddam, demonstrating the highest level of virtuosity. It is no coincidence that he always stands at the center of the group.

At our ceremony, the muqaddam, as far as I was able to observe, usually set a 2/3 polyrhythm on the double drum — where every three beats of one rhythmic line correspond to two beats of another. Like all Maghrebi rhythms, this is a complementary polyrhythm: a combination of an even (“feminine”) line and an odd (“masculine”) one. The two dervishes to his left played the “feminine” parts with fixed, steady rhythms (each different from the other), while the two dervishes to his right improvised. All of this merged into a highly complex rhythmic pattern.
It is precisely polyrhythm that serves as the instrument leading participants of the Lila into a trance state.

The reason is that each of us has an internal mechanism that recognizes the rhythms around us, identifies the dominant one, and attunes itself to it. Our brain naturally synchronizes its dominant frequency with the main rhythm in our environment, even though we are not aware of it.



In a state of trance, or in an altered state of perception, people behave, feel, and think in ways quite different from their usual patterns. Unexpected images often arise; they may “hear” the thoughts of those around them and sense their emotions. People in trance frequently begin to move more freely and naturally, their bodies less constrained by rational control or social norms. They become capable of expressing suppressed emotions and releasing accumulated tension through rhythmic movement and dance.

The second part of the ceremony — mluk or the expulsion of jinn— is intended precisely for this. It is said that this ritual became part of the Lila relatively recently, in the 19th century, under the influence of local pagan traditions of North Africa, and apparently in response to the very needs of psychological hygiene. In societies where freedom of expression — especially for women — is heavily suppressed by religious and social norms, this becomes a pressing issue.

During the part of the ceremony called mluk, magical incantations are used to draw the “jinn” outward, for it is believed that, hearing the summons, they push the people they possess closer to the musicians. Most often these are women suffering from various emotional disturbances, especially hysteria, and during this part of the ceremony they are allowed to remove the headscarf that usually covers their hair and let it fall loose. The Aissawa intensify the tempo and volume of the drums; the women begin to make repetitive movements with their bodies and heads until they collapse from exhaustion. It is believed that the moment of complete physical depletion marks the expulsion of the jinn. The musicians maintain total composure and detachment, and in some cases they close a circle around the patient and continue the ceremony.

In our case, either the jinn were not strongly summoned, or they simply weren’t present — in any event, there was no drama. No one collapsed, although all of us, of course, including the women, felt very free and uninhibited during this phase.
         
However, after the cathartic purification comes the climax and most important phase of the Lila — it is called hadra, which means “Presence.” In one form or another, hadra is part of nearly all traditional Sufi ceremonies in Algeria, Tunisia, and especially Morocco. Although its outward form varies, its essence remains unchanged: it is the expression of a state of mystical union.

Why are a shared rhythm and a shared dance so important? Remember what we spoke about earlier — the mechanism that synchronizes the dominant frequency of our brain waves with the main rhythm in our environment. It turns out that when we participate in a collective action involving music and movement, the rhythmic oscillations of our brains synchronize not only with the rhythm of the music, but also with one another. (This has been demonstrated experimentally.) Not only in a poetic sense, but in the most literal one, we become a single whole.

But even this is not all. It turns out that the synchronization of brain rhythms becomes even stronger when people touch one another — for example, by holding hands. This, it seems, is why circle dances were invented.

In this part of the ritual, the Aissawa stand up and divide into two groups: one continues playing the instruments, while the other, having removed their shoes, forms a semicircle and, with their arms around each other’s shoulders, begins a distinctive dance. The movements are very simple — the upper body sways forward and back, and on certain beats the words of the dhikr are chanted (there is no escaping polyrhythms!). The Aissawa encourage everyone present to join the dance, and we join in.

From this moment on, I don’t clearly remember who did what or how — I remember only the feeling, for which no book would be enough, yet two words are entirely sufficient: “The Sufi is One.” There are no men or women, no children; no Russians, no Berbers; no old or young, no thin or stout, no clever or foolish — there is only the Soul, and the purpose of the Soul is the Soul itself.
          
Like the thirty birds of Attar, who sought the mysterious king of birds, the Simurgh, only to discover that they themselves were the Simurgh, we — who had traveled seven seas in search of the Presence — understood that we are the Presence.

It is hard to convey the feeling of love and gratitude toward the Moroccan brothers who opened this experience to us.


EGYPTIAN TANOURA


“When you begin to whirl in dance, the universe with you
Sets worlds in motion in its boundless celebration.
No earthly soul can hold its soaring breakthrough —
Weariness flees before that secret invitation.
At drumbeat’s call, at clapping hands’ bright sound,
You spin — and with the turning world are one, spellbound…” 
(Rumi)

What is the most familiar image of a Sufi if not the whirling dervish? And although we gently remind people that Sufism is not limited to spinning, and that most Sufis not only do not whirl but do not use dance or music in their practices at all, this meditation of the Mevlevi dervishes was indeed popular at one time in Asia and North Africa. In some places it has survived to this day.

During our Egyptian caravan, we witnessed a whirling ceremony based on dervish traditions in the historic Al;Guri khanaqa in Cairo. It is not merely a dance, but rather a complex performance that weaves together Sufi music, poetry, whirling dance, and pantomime. Although the performers were professional dancers who may not have belonged to any Sufi order, the ritual they recreated is undoubtedly worthy of attention, for it has preserved the key elements of the symbolism embedded in this teaching instrument by the Sufi school that created it.

First, a few words about the place where the performance unfolded.

This building in the center of Cairo dating from the 16th century was once a Sufi khanaqa (or tekkiya). The khanaqa (or khanka, as it is called in Egypt) was part of a religious complex built by Sultan al;Guri and named after him. It is quite likely that dervishes once practiced their whirling meditations here — in the warm season in the courtyard, and in winter inside the assembly hall. And although Sufis no longer gather in the historic Al;Guri khanaqa, musical and dance performances featuring whirling are still held here every Wednesday and Saturday. One can attend them for a modest entrance fee.

The tradition of whirling was begun in T;rkiye by Jalaluddin Rumi, the great 13th;century Sufi and poet. When the Sufi meditation of whirling reached Egypt in the 14th century, it transformed into the original and colorful ritual of the local dervishes known as Tanoura. Tanoura in Arabic means “skirt,” because the dervishes — the tanourgis — who perform the whirling dance wear vivid costumes with multicolored circular skirts.

The combination of colors in their costumes was originally chosen in accordance with precise knowledge preserved by the ancient Schools whose heirs the Sufis considered themselves to be. Perhaps for this reason the patchwork attire of the tanourgis bore an unmistakable resemblance to the garments of medieval European jesters and harlequins, whose connection to Sufi schools was shown by Idries Shah in The Sufis. In the harlequin’s costume, as on the skirt of the tanourgi, pairs of so;called complementary, or opposite, colors were always present.

Those who are familiar with the basics of design know that complementary colors are those which, when combined, produce white light. If you overlap beams of red and green light, the resulting beam becomes white — perhaps you have seen this effect when a circus arena is illuminated simultaneously by red and green spotlights. Red and green are complementary colors; when united, they complete one another, restoring the wholeness of white light, just as +1 and ;1 together sum to zero.

Like other instruments of the Sufis, their garments served as a means of instruction — a nonverbal message — and the combination of pantomime, dance movements, and music was the only way to convey certain ideas of the Tradition to a broad audience, most of whom were not merely uneducated but entirely illiterate.

In the costumes of the tanourgi, one often sees a double pairing of complementary colors — red with green, and yellow with violet. This is precisely the color symbolism of the four primordial elements (fire, air, water, and earth) in the Hermetic Tradition. As we have noted, if you merge red with green or yellow with violet, the result is pure white light. In the same way, if the four elements are purified and united in the alchemical process, the result is the quintessence — the philosopher’s stone.

Fire, air, earth, and water also have their equivalents in spiritual alchemy: they correspond to the four components of the human being, from the physical body to the subtlest aspects of spirit. The outcome of their purification and harmonization in the process of transmutation is the Perfect Human of the Sufis — Insan;i;Kamil.

In the imperfect human being, as in prima materia, the four elements exist in a chaotic, intermixed state. At this stage, he or she is a slave to ever;shifting states — like a kaleidoscope — governed by impulses and moods. “The world is ruled by Four and Seven,” wrote Omar Khayyam, referring to the mechanical nature of people who, at every moment of life, are subject to the influences of one or another of the four elements and seven planets. The whirl of bodily desires and impulses, automatic thoughts, uncontrolled emotions, and contradictory urges — this is our life before we step onto the Path.

…This is how the tanourgi begins to spin — wearing up to four Tanoura skirts in different colors. It is said that their combined weight can reach fifteen kilograms. A tremendous burden, isn’t it? Sometimes the dancer also holds four brightly painted tambourines pressed to his ears — perhaps a hint that the person is deaf to the voice of their true Self, which is trying to awaken them. In the rapid spinning, the dancer’s garments create a vortex of colors and shapes — a wheel of passions and restless thoughts, which, without pausing for even a moment, is spun by an unrefined person.

After spinning like this for several minutes, the tanourgi begins to discard the tambourines, and then starts removing his garments one by one — shedding each multicolored skirt in turn. His actions symbolize the gradual liberation of a person who has stepped onto the Path of transformation: freedom from the mechanical nature of conditioned mind and emotions, and from the dominion of the four elements.

At a certain moment, a folded banner bearing the Name of God appears in the dancer’s hands. He touches it to his forehead, and then unfurls it so that the sacred standard, fluttering, rises above him. One does not need to be an initiate to read this gesture as the symbol of a station on the Sufi Path — the moment when a person opens to Divine guidance and becomes a conduit for the spirit.

Soon after unfurling the banner with the Name of God, the dancer frees himself from the weight of the last of the multicolored skirts, revealing beneath it a simple, single;colored robe. The dancer remains dressed in green — the color of the Sufi Tradition. Originally, I believe, the color of the final garment worn by the tanourgi was white, like the robes of the whirling Mevlevi dervishes.

The person is now free of veils, and though still living in the world, is no longer of the world — he has returned Home. The dervish has become a Sufi. The endless bustle of petty thoughts, passions, and worldly concerns no longer clouds the Path of the “poor in spirit,” the one who has left nothing behind and gained everything.

Today the truth of ecstasy
unveiled its face and entered me;
I lost myself within its flame,
and it was lost in me the same.
No dogma’s rule, no creed’s command,
no fear to rise, no shame to stand,
no doubt, no guilt, no judgment’s chain
can find a place in this domain.
For in the heart’s most secret night
a single star exploded light —
so fierce it drowned the heavens’ dome
and called the wandering soul back home.
(Rumi)

…The tanourgi bows to the audience and leaves; the performance is over. But does the illusion;show called “the whirling of veils” end for the spectator as well?

Or… “show must go on”?

;
RIFAI DHIKR


Sufi dhikr is the remembrance of God by His Name. Aloud or silently within oneself, in a circle of dervishes or in solitude, at a designated hour or in the midst of routine tasks — washing dishes, preparing dinner — it makes no difference to God where or when one turns to Him; what matters to Him is how.

If you call a person by name, they will turn toward you and listen. If you call upon God by one of His Names, He too, in the biblical expression, will “turn His face toward you” (Numbers 6:24).

The greater our need for a person, the more tenderness, pleading, or desperation enters our voice — and the more quickly they respond. Sometimes we repeat the name of someone dear to us, aloud or silently, not because we need anything from them, but simply because speaking their name fills us with love and joy. Why should it be any different when we address God?

For the remembrance, dervishes use one of the ninety;nine Divine Names or epithets found in the Quran, as well as other prayer formulas. The Name As;Salam, which I chose as my pen;name, for example, is one of the ninety;nine Names; it means “The Giver of Peace”.

Dhikr is an essential part of the dervishes’ weekly litanies. The prayer may be performed aloud (“loud” dhikr) or silently within oneself (“silent” dhikr).
The “loud” dhikr can serve both as a breathing exercise and as a kind of prelude — a way of releasing certain emotional energies before the true practice begins.
This is especially important in cultures where people are naturally strong;tempered. Excess emotion can become an obstacle to attuning oneself to the proper “frequency.” In such cases, the “loud” portion of the litany, accompanied by vigorous movement, is followed by the “silent” one, in which the participant — now freed from psychological tension — finally becomes capable of perceiving subtler influences.

The “silent” part may include, for example, a conversation with the sheikh, meditation, or some form of developmental exercise.

The mosque where the dhikr takes place was built in the last century on the site of a medieval zawiya erected around the tomb of the grandson of Ahmad al;Rifai, the founder of the Rifai order. The former zawiya remains to this day the center of Rifai activity and gatherings, where they meet with the sheikh and perform dhikr after the Friday prayer.

The dervishes’ litany, like any spiritual exercise, begins with an “opening” formula. This element is essential and significant: its function is the same as a greeting at the beginning of a conversation or, if you will, the “BEGIN” command in an algorithm. It is a declaration of intent — a statement of readiness to enter into contact with the timeless energy of the Tradition.

In the rituals of the dervishes, this role is usually fulfilled by the first sura, Al;Fatiha (“The Opening”), recited by the leader of the dhikr — the dhakkar.

After the opening formula, the introduction may continue with other Quranic suras, chosen according to the time and context. Verses of Sufi poets or hymns addressed to God or to the Prophet ; are also used; these may be recited in Arabic or in the native language of the dervishes.

After the introduction comes the dhikr itself.
During our journey to Morocco, Khalil explained that the traditional prayer formulas of the dhikr are arranged concentrically. This particular sequence leads the meditator step by step from the outer to the inner; from the periphery of Reality — where our plane of existence lies — toward its central point beyond time and space, the Source of creation.

The concentric core of the dhikr begins with the shahada — La ilaha illa’Llah, “There are no gods but God,” repeated one hundred times or more. One may also encounter the variant La ilaha illa Hu — “There are no gods but Him.”

In the next cycle of the dhikr, the formula La ilaha illa’Llah contracts into a single word — Allah — which is likewise repeated one hundred times or more (a variant is the phrase Allah;Hu, whose meaning may be rendered as “God — only He”).

After this, the dhikr condenses further into the single syllable Hu at the end of Allah;Hu. Hu means “He.” (Another variant is Huwa;Hu, where Huwa also means “He.”) The repeated invocation Hu, Hu, Hu… resembles not so much speech as breath — the pure vibration of a primordial sound.

After the core of the dhikr comes the concluding part, without which no dhikr is complete. Its function is analogous to the “END” command in an algorithm or the phrase “Over and out.” It may consist of a single hymn or of Al-Fatiha, the sura with which the ritual began.

Is it not remarkable that the beginning and the end of the prayer cycle are marked by the same formula? Alpha and Omega, the head and the tail of the Ouroboros, in truth meet at a single point…         
               
I have observed approximately this structure of the dhikr, with minor variations, in the litanies of dervishes in many countries — from the Balkans to Central Asia and North Africa.

During our pilgrimage to Egypt in November of this year, we met a woman Sufi named Omneya al;Naggar, thanks to whom we were able to attend the dhikr of the dervishes of the Rifai order in the Al;Rifai Mosque in Cairo. Omneya belongs to the Shadhili tariqa, but through her acquaintances she kindly found out when the Rifai dhikr would take place and brought us there.

The Rifai dervishes whose ceremony we observed in the Al;Rifai Mosque in Cairo are very open and welcoming toward outside visitors. The mosque is not closed during the dhikr, so in addition to those who come intentionally or in sympathy, there are also casual passers;by who wander in.

The Rifai dervishes whose ceremony we witnessed in the Al;Rifai Mosque are known for a distinctive manner of performing the dhikr, which has earned them the nickname “howling” dervishes. Yet this time we heard nothing of the sort. True, from time to time one of the participants would shout something loudly, but this was most likely a way of releasing excess emotional energy, and according to Omneya, such behavior is generally not encouraged during the dhikr.
Most of the dervishes took part in the ritual standing, though one elderly participant was permitted to sit. The Rifai sheikh was present at the dhikr, but other senior dervishes led the recitation. After the ceremony, the sheikh spoke with several of his students.

I will end my account of the dhikr with the following story, included by Idries Shah in his collection Tales of the Dervishes:

There lived a dervish whose thinking had never gone beyond what others told him. He belonged to a school that emphasized asceticism and strict righteousness, and he was absorbed in questions of morality and jurisprudence — mistaking emotional religiosity for the search for ultimate Truth.

One day, while walking along a riverbank, he heard another dervish on a distant island reciting the sacred formula incorrectly. Convinced it was his duty to correct the man, he rowed across, explained the “proper” pronunciation, and left satisfied that he had done a good deed.

For a while there was silence. Then he heard the island dervish slipping back into the old pronunciation. He was just beginning to lament human stubbornness when he saw something astonishing: the island dervish was walking across the water toward him. Reaching the boat, he said humbly:

“Brother, forgive me for troubling you again, but could you explain the formula once more? I still haven’t managed to remember it correctly.”

;
AND THE CARAVAN GOES ON...


Travelling across mountains, deserts, and ancient shrines, we eventually arrive at the same place from which we set out — the inner chambers of the heart.

I have come to understand that the true purpose of our journeys was never to find answers, nor even to gather stories to tell. It was to become available — to be touched by people whose presence awakens something long;forgotten within us.
The dervishes we met — silent or singing, teaching or wandering, surrounded by crowds or hidden from the world — were mirrors. Some reflected tenderness, others discipline; some revealed service and humility, others a fierce clarity that left no room for self;deception. Each showed a different facet of the same Reality. This Reality lies within us.

If these pages carry any blessing, may it be this: that the reader, too, begins to see their life as a caravan, where every encounter is meaningful, and every person met along the road is a teacher.

May your steps be guided by the One, and your heart remain awake — for this caravan, the one that leaves no footprints, never truly ends.














Calgary, Alberta, May 2026