The Anatomy of Melancholy

Their account of the Day of Judgment, with three trumpet blasts to prepare for it and its duration of fifty thousand years; of Paradise, consisting wholly in “the pleasure of intercourse and eating,” and “written for brutish people, a beastlike blessedness”—is so ridiculous that Virgil, Dante, Lucian or any poet could invent nothing more fabulous.

Their rites and ceremonies are utterly vain and superstitious. Their law absolutely forbids wine and pork; they must pray five times a day, always towards the south, and wash their whole bodies before and afterwards, with many similar observances. In fasting, vows, religious orders and pilgrimages they far surpass any Papists.

They often fast for a month together and must not eat a morsel until sunset. Their Qalandars, dervishes and Torlachers, and so on, are in some cases more abstemious than Carthusians, Franciscans and anchorites: they give up everything, live alone, eat sparingly and go naked.

They make pilgrimages as far as the River Ganges—as the Gentiles of those regions also do—to wash themselves. They hold that the river has a supreme power to cleanse them of all sins, and that no one can be saved without washing in it. For this reason they come from near and far throughout India: “there is a vast gathering of people of every nation,” and countless numbers visit it every year.

Others go as far as Mecca to Muhammad’s tomb, a journey both miraculous and meritorious. Their ceremonies of throwing stones to stone the Devil, of eating a camel at Cairo on the way, their fasts, their running until they sweat, their long prayers, Muhammad’s temple and tomb and how it was built—these would take a whole volume to describe.

For the trouble they take in this holy pilgrimage, all their sins are forgiven and they are regarded as saints. Several of them, when they return, put out their eyes with hot bricks so that they may never again see anything profane, and bite out their tongues, and so on. They look for their prophet Muhammad as Jews do for their Messiah.

Read more about their customs, rites and ceremonies in Lonicer’s Turkish History, volume 1, chapters 10–24; Bredenbach, chapters 4–6; Leo Africanus, book 1; Busbecq; Sabellicus; Purchas, book 3, chapters 3, 4 and 5; Theodor Bibliander; and others. You will find many foolish ceremonies among them. Most lamentably, the people are generally so scrupulous in observing them that, if the smallest detail is omitted, they think they will be damned: it is an unforgivable offence and can scarcely be pardoned.

“I kept in my house among my attendants,” says Busbecq, formerly the Turkish ambassador in Constantinople, “a Turkish boy who happened to eat shellfish, food forbidden by their law. The next day, when he learned what he had done, he was not merely sick and vomiting but deeply distressed. He wept and grieved for many days afterwards, tormenting himself over his foul offence.”