All over Turkey there are cemeteries, so many cemeteries that in many places the land of the living has been encroached upon, and a once fertile country has become naught but a country of the dead. The traveller in the Far East will remember that exactly the same thing can be said of China. And in all the old Turkish cemeteries there are tombs of saints or holy men who lived and died in a manner that justifies the Oriental in paying homage to them, or in supplicating their intervention with Allah.

Many of the cemeteries are now traversed by roads and houses which have been built over thousands of graves, but the grave of a saint is always preserved and always sure to have its daily visitors. In some cases a wall is built around the spot where the saint lies buried, a barred opening being left to permit of the visitors seeing the tomb. Here, when the sun has set, you will notice the supplicants arriving. Very often they are women; and, having said their prayers to Allah, or made known their desires to the saint, and supplicated his intercession, the pilgrims generally light a candle and place it in the barred opening. Sometimes it is only the stump of a candle, sometimes a whole candle, according to the position and wealth of the supplicant. At no hour of the night is the tomb of the saint in darkness. Should all the candles burn themselves out, there would still remain the oil-lamp which hangs in front of the tomb, and which is perpetually tended by dervishes or holy men belonging to what would be called in the West a religious order. This lamp is always sure to continue burning till the sun has risen. The belated traveller in the great Turkish wildernesses will frequently notice a little light burning feebly in the dead of night, far from any habitation; and, when he approaches nearer, he will see that it is an oil-lamp burning before some ancient tomb.

There are many holy tombs, however, before which no night-lights burn, and where no candles are ever lit by penitents. The saints in these sepulchres are honoured in a different manner. One such tomb is situated at the top of Roumelie Hissar Hill on the Bosphorus and in the precincts of the Becktaché Téké or Monastery of the Dervishes. It marks the spot where the first martyrs in the army of Mohamet the Conqueror fell fighting the Greeks, before Constantinople was taken. By the side of the modest little gravestone which marks this resting-place is a small scrub-oak, the branches of which are covered with little bits of cotton-wool and silk of all colours. Each of these knotted rags indicates that a supplicant prayed at that sepulchre, for, at the end of a prayer, it is customary to add a knot to the many which flutter on the scrub-oak. Visitors will always notice that some of the bits of cloth are fresh in contrast to others which are withered. The fresh rags represent fresh hopes. Too often, alas! the withered rags typify hopes which are as withered as they.

The pilgrim who visits holy tombs in Spain and Italy will notice an extraordinary resemblance between the religious customs which prevail at these tombs and the customs which we have just described. The Turkish mode of attracting the saint's attention is, however, peculiar to Turkey. The mother, the father, or the lover will come to the tomb, and, in a subdued voice, call upon the saint by name. The supplicant will then listen attentively. Round the tomb there may be a dozen persons calling on the canonized one in a stage whisper, gently knock-knock-knocking at the same time on his tomb with a tiny pebble.

When they imagine they have caught the saint's eye – I mean, of course, his ear – they open their hearts and implore his intercession. Then one by one they gently get up and depart, relieved, encouraged, full of hope. One leaves with the assurance that her child will get better. The other that her lover will return. The third that Allah will show him how to earn bread for himself and those he loves.

Even deputies and candidates for high government positions have been known to knock in this way at saints' tombs in the silence of the night, and have been heard to extol their own virtues and their superiority to other aspirants for the same post. [1] This gentle tap-tap-tapping with little pebbles has so filigreed the marble tombs that sometimes there is not a square inch of smooth surface left.

Among the tombs of saints that have daily and nightly visitors, men, women, and children, is that of Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín. In life he was esteemed for his helpfulness and his homely sanctity; and now for many centuries his spirit has been procuring blessings both spiritual and temporal for the people of Asia Minor. Who could count the little cloth strips of all colours and all kinds of material that adorn the palings flourish ing above his tomb? And when you recollect that each strip has many knots and that each knot represents a sincere and ardent prayer, you will realize what a busy time the saintly intercessor has had since he went to heaven.

The most curious thing about all this respect that is paid to Saint Nasr-ud-Dín is that obviously nobody was ever less of a saint than that stout, rubicund family man with his love of a good joke, his appreciation of the good things of life, his very ample waist, and his very slender spiritual equipment. He was, it will be remembered, once cursed for heresy by his ecclesiastical superior; and probably he was till the end of his life somewhat of a gay old heathen like Omar-i-Khayyám. As he never wrote anything, however, he was never definitely found out on this heresy question.

Nevertheless, the Turks all know many of his shortcomings, for, as we have already seen, they are never tired of telling funny stories about him. Yet, with all that, they evidently prefer his intercession to that of the most ascetic dervish in the Islamic calendar. Perhaps they think that, even now, the khoja is better able to understand human frailty and to excuse it.

These remarks apply only to the lower classes. The upper classes in Turkey are all ashamed of Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín. The young Turks, the literati, the ulemas, the diplomats and the Pashas regard him as more or less of a disgrace to the cloth – just as the official Persians regard Omar-i-Khayyám – and they always try to shift the conversation to the old hero of Plevna, or to some of the warlike Padishahs who were (in their opinion) more typically Turkish, and more of a credit to the Osmanli.

And the foreign scholars who have made a life-long study of Turkish are sometimes with them in this. They, too, dismiss the old khoja in a contemptuous sentence as "a Turkish Joe Millar." But the continual throng of pilgrims at the tomb of Nasr-ud-Dín shows that that merry gentleman was something more than this. It is certainly curious how very green the old man's memory is kept, while that of many a whirling dervish and howling dervish pre-eminent in their day for mortification and sanctity has passed into oblivion. Only six or seven years ago a new tomb was erected over the grave of Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín; but, though it is expensive and up to date, it is not architecturally so beautiful as the old tomb – in fact it looks like a Parisian newspaper kiosk in the Rue de la Paix. We have not, therefore, reproduced here the photographs of it which we obtained from Konia.

The reader may be interested in the following reference to the tomb of Khoja Nasr-ud-Dín which occurs in the "Turkey in Europe" of Sir Charles Elliot (Odysseus):

"The tomb of the khoja may be seen to this day at Ak Shehir, in the vilayet of Konia. In the middle of a field or graveyard – I am not sure which, for I saw the site in mid winter when everything was deep in snow – is a small domed building, partly open at the sides; under the dome is a tomb above which hangs the enormous green turban, about the size of an ordinary umbrella, which the khoja wore in his lifetime. A small hole is left in the masonry of the grave, as he insisted on having a window through which he could look out on the world of men, and a slab which bears his name gives the year of his death as 1366 a.h., equivalent to about 1950 a.d., by which inscription he is said to have meant to puzzle future generations."

Before leaving the exhilarating subject of tombstones I should like to add some remarks on sundry points that cropped up in the course of the foregoing sketch.

I need hardly point out, in the first place, that the burning of a light before a holy tomb, altar, or picture is a custom of extreme antiquity, and is still practised very extensively both in the Roman Catholic and in the Greek Church. One form of the same practice is the burning of lamps before ikons in the houses of all orthodox Russians. A Mohammedan friend of mine once tried to convince me that the same pious custom is observed – of all places in the world! – In the National Liberal Club of London; and when I challenged him on the subject, he pointed in all seriousness to the shaded electric light which glows night and day before the fine oil-painting of Mr. Lloyd George which adorns the large smoke room of that institution.

The Mohammedan religious orders who indulge in the ceremonial lighting of candles before tombs, as well as in the use of both candles and incense in public worship, are known as dervishes. Some of the ceremonies of these dervishes are superficially analogous to those of extreme ritualists in the Anglican Church, but, Allah Akbar! Turkey also has her John Kensits and such-like "boys of the bull-dog breed " who will on no account, sir, tolerate candles in day time. "It is never related in the traditions," a Low Church Mollah once remarked to an English diplomatist, "that our Lord the Prophet went about lighting candles on the tombs of dead dervishes. Had it been necessary or useful we should certainly have heard that he did so."

Thus, in the East as in the West, mighty religious forces act and re-act on each other. Deep calleth unto Deep. Pious people light candles and diabolical people blow them out (or vice versa: it really makes no difference). And, strange to say, all tends to the progress and to the religious development of this wondrous world of ours.

"Odysseus" gives the following interesting account of a visit he once paid to a dervish monastery:

"I once had an opportunity of conversing with a high functionary of the Mevlevi sect. By his request I visited him between 10 and 11 p.m., as the month was Ramazan, and the earlier hours of the night were taken up by the ordinary Mohammedan prayers. From this house, which stood in a large courtyard, there issued a rhythmical noise like the pulsations of a steam-engine, and I wondered if there could be a factory in the neighbourhood. As I went up the staircase the mysterious noise grew louder and louder, but I could not imagine whence it proceeded until I was suddenly introduced into a large room where at least a hundred dervishes were seated, some against the walls and some on sheepskins spread in the middle of the floor, dressed in flowing garments, blue or drab, and wearing tall felt hats shaped like flower-pots. The noise was produced by these all chanting, "Ya Hú, ya Hú, ya Hú, ya Hú," [2] in a low, guttural voice, which spiritual exercise they intended to continue till morning. The expression of their faces was that of men in a mesmeric trance, and not one of them seemed to notice the arrival of a stranger. In the middle a stoutish man of about forty was walking up and down. He was dressed like the others, but his shaggy yellow beard and golden spectacles made him look more like a German professor than a dancing dervish. He apologized for receiving me so late, saying, with a tolerant but weary air, that he was obliged to attend the long prayers recited in mosques after sunset during Ramazan, and I thought he also seemed rather glad to escape from his own religious ceremony.

He then took me into another room which presented a very singular appearance, as it was lighted by ten silver candlesticks placed on the floor in the shape of the letter Y. There was no sofa or divan of any kind, and we sat on cushions placed on the floor. On the wall were hung some pictures of Mecca and of the Bektashi shrine at Aramsun, as well as some remarkably bad photographs which he had taken himself. He had obtained a kodak, he told me, from Paris, but with infinite difficulty, and he regretted that local prejudices did not allow him to use it freely. To my great surprise he offered me raki, and took some himself, though as a rule the laxest Mohammedan will at least pretend not to drink in Ramazan. He apologized for not speaking French, which he said he could read a little, and asked me if I could recommend him a good French newspaper of liberal views. Then he said that he had heard that Sir J. Redhouse had translated the Mesnevi into English. Had it produced much effect in London? He had heard that music was used in English services, as in those of the Mevlevis, and he seemed to think it would be natural that British congregations should take to dancing as well. I did not like to disappoint him by saying that I had not heard of the existence of any dancing dervishes in England, and therefore spoke of the Mohammedan Church at Liverpool. He said with some hesitation, and in a low voice, that this was not what he had meant. He did not care about the introduction of Mohammedanism into England, but he had hoped that people might have seen that the mystic principles enunciated in the Mesnevi were compatible with all religions, and could be grafted on Christianity as well as on Islam."

The authors of the present volume once visited the Tchelebi of Konia, the head of the Mevlevi, in his own monastery, and no sooner had we sat down than the holy man clapped his hands, and ordered the servant who appeared to bring what he called Frankish Sherbet. This turned out to be excellent champagne, and it was indulged in by the Tchelebi as well as by his guests.

Strictly speaking, the dead cannot, according to Mohammedan tenets, be asked to intercede for one with Allah. Allah is alone in the terrible isolation of his glory and has no connecting links with any of his creatures. There is neither Son, Madonna nor Saint to act as mediator. It would be the height of impiety to address prayers even to the Prophet. But in practice the dead are asked to intercede, as described in the foregoing sketch, and also in the account of Sheikh Assiferi of Latakieh.