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dervish
World Encyclopedia | Date: 2005
dervish Member of a Muslim fraternity. Communities arose within
Sufism, and by the 12th century had established themselves in the Middle East. The Bektashi order acted as companions to the Ottoman
Janissaries, and were suppressed by
Atatürk. The chief devotion of dervishes is
dhikr (‘remembering of God’). Its encouragement of emotional display and hypnotic trances has earned dervishes the epithet ‘whirling’.
© World Encyclopedia 2005, originally published by Oxford University Press 2005.
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