Les saints des derviches tourneurs

A French translation (1918–22) of a fourteenth-century Persian text about the founders of the Mevlevi order of whirling dervishes.

This is a two-volume translation by Clément Huart (1854–1926), a leading French Orientalist, of a fourteenth-century Persian text recording the lives of the founders of the order of whirling dervishes. Published in 1918–22, it provides fascinating insights into the origins of this branch of Islamic mysticism.Clément Huart (1854–1926) studied Middle Eastern languages and served as a French diplomat for twenty years before becoming Professor of Persian at the Ecole des Langues Orientales in Paris. This two-volume French translation (1918–22), published as part of a larger series on Islamic hagiography, focuses on the medieval founders of the Mevlevi order of whirling dervishes, whose main centre, Konya, Huart had visited twenty years earlier. The fourteenth-century Persian text is preserved in several manuscripts, and Huart's translation follows an early seventeenth-century manuscript from his private collection. Huart regards the text as providing evidence primarily about the intellectual and moral contexts of the origins of the dervishes' mystical movement rather than about strict historical facts, but also points to the relevance of its treatment of dreams, prophecies, apparitions and paranormal phenomena to modern researchers of hypnosis and psychosis. The translation is accompanied by explanatory notes.