There is one outstanding example of pure dance: that of the whirling dervishes, an art that has been practiced since the 13th century. The procedure is part of a Muslim ceremony called the dhikr, the purpose of which is to glorify God and seek spiritual perfection. Not all dervish orders dance; some simply stand on one foot and move the other foot to music. Those who dance, or, rather, whirl, are the Mawlawī dervishes, an order that was founded by the Persian poet and mystic Jalāl al-Dīn al-Rūmī at Konya, in Anatolia, in the 13th century.

The performance, for which all the participants don tall conical hats and black mantles, takes place in a large hall in the tekke, the building in which the dervishes live. The dervishes sit in a circle listening to music. Then, rising slowly, they move to greet the shaykh, or master, and cast off the black coat to emerge in white shirts and waistcoats. They keep their individual places with respect to one another and begin to revolve rhythmically. They throw back their heads and raise the palms of their hands, a symbol of giving and taking. The rhythm accelerates, and they whirl faster and faster. In this way they enter a trance in an attempt to lose their personal identities and to attain union with the Almighty. Later they may sit, pray, and begin all over again. The dhikr ceremony always ends with a prayer and a procession.

Mime shows

In the medieval Muslim theatre, mime shows aimed to entertain rather than to uplift their audiences. Regrettably, few mime shows were recorded in writing, and those that were recorded were set down primarily to serve as guidelines for directors, who might tamper with the wording, as in the improvisation of the Italian commedia dell’arte. Some plays were on historical themes, but preference was for comedies or farces with an erotic flavour. The audience was largely composed of the poor and uneducated.

A rudimentary theatrical form, the mime show long enjoyed widespread popularity in Anatolia and other parts of the Ottoman Empire. Called meddah (eulogist) or mukallit (imitator) in Turkish, the mimic had many similarities to his Classical Greek forerunners. Basically, he was a storyteller who used mimicry as a comic element, designed to appeal to his largely uneducated audience. By gesture and word he would imitate animals, birds, or local dialects; he was very popular in Arabic- and Turkish-speaking areas. Even today he has not been wholly supplanted in the Islamic world by literacy or by such modern entertainments as radio, television, and the cinema. Sometimes several meddahs performed together, and this may have been the source of a rural theatrical performance.

Ortaoyunu

The ortaoyunu (middle show) was the first type of genuine theatre the Turks, and possibly other Muslim peoples, ever had. The Ottoman sultans provided subsidies for ortaoyunu companies of actors, who consequently became generally accepted; also some were retained by the princes of the Romanian principalities under Ottoman rule. The fact that they continued to enjoy popularity to World War I may be explained by their simple dramatic appeal, which was coupled with sharp satire of the well-to-do and the ruling classes (but hardly ever of Islam). This irreverence frequently resulted in fines and imprisonment for the actors, but it never produced a basic change of style.

During the 19th and 20th centuries the ortaoyunu was generally performed in an open square or a large coffeehouse. There was no stage, and props were simple: they generally comprised a table or movable screen, while other objects were represented by paintings glued on paper. An orchestra of about four musicians enlivened the show and gave the performers, who were all male, their cues. Roles were generally stereotyped, with stock characters, such as a dandy, the foreign physician, and regional types (Kurds, Albanians, Armenians, Arabs, and Jews) quarreling and fighting in slapstick style. Mimicry was important, and some actors changed roles and costumes. The plot was flimsy, a mere frame for the dialogue, which was itself frequently improvised.

The marionette theatre

In comparison with ortaoyunu, the marionette theatre, although popular in Turkistan (under the name of çadir hayâl) and other parts of Muslim Central Asia, never really caught on in the Ottoman Empire.

Shadow plays (Karagöz)

On the other hand, the shadow play had been widely popular for many centuries in Turkish- or Arabic-speaking countries. Its essence, like that of the mime shows, was entertainment without moral import, and few plays were recorded in writing beyond a sketch of the action. Most were comedies and farces that were performed for the enjoyment of an audience that was, for the most part, very poor and uneducated.

In Turkey the Karagöz (a character whose name means “black-eye”) theatre was the prevalent form of shadow play. This art apparently came from China or perhaps from Southeast Asia, as the French term ombres chinoises indeed hints, though the prevailing element of the grotesque was probably inherited from ancient Greece by way of Byzantium. The Karagöz was well known in Turkey during the 16th century but was so fully developed that it must have been introduced much earlier, and it quickly spread from Syria to North Africa and the Greek islands. Its performers were in great demand at the sultan’s court as well as elsewhere, and they soon organized their own guild. Since only the framework of the play was sketched in writing, there was scope for a great deal of impromptu wit, and Karagöz shows, like the ortaoyunu, were inevitably satirical. But with the coming of motion pictures the Karagöz declined, and performances are now mostly confined to the month of Ramadan.

In the traditional performance of the Karagöz, the stage is separated from the audience by a frame holding a sheet; the latter has shrunk over the years from about 6 by 7.5 feet (1.8 by 2.3 metres) to about 3 by 2 feet (0.9 by 0.6 metre). The puppets, which are flat and made of leather, are controlled by the puppeteers with rods and are placed behind the screen. An oil lamp is then placed still farther back so that it will throw the puppets’ shadows onto the screen.

A standard shadow play has three main elements: introduction, dialogue, and plot. The introduction is fairly stereotyped and consists of an argument and usually a quarrel between Karagöz and Hacivat, the two most common characters. The former is a simple, commonsense fellow, while the latter is more formal and polished, if shallow and pedantic. The dialogue between the two varies with the occasion but always contains impromptu repartee, though most puppet masters have at least 28 different plots in stock—a different one for each night of Ramadan. Some are historical, many ribald, but all are popular entertainment. Additional characters or animals may be introduced, calling for great skill on the part of the puppet master and his assistant in manipulating several simultaneously as well as in reciting the text in changing tones and playing music. Some have one or two musicians to help.

Mimicry and caricature, while essential to both the meddah and the ortaoyunu, are technically more developed in the shadow play. Here entire productions are based on a comedy of manners or of character. In addition to the stock characters from various ethnic groups, there are, for example, the drug addict who wraps his narcotic in dissolving gum before the fast begins so as not to sin, the light-headed Turk (“he who eats his inheritance”) who is a prodigal and a debauchee, the highway robber, the stutterer, and the policeman.

Karagöz is the most frequently performed but not the sole type of shadow play in Muslim countries. In Egypt a shadow theatre is known to have existed as early as the 13th century, long before records of Karagöz shows were kept in Turkey. A physician, Muḥammad ibn Dāniyāl, wrote three shadow plays that have survived. They were performed in the 13th century and display humour and satire and the lampooning of matchmaking and marriage. These plays also introduce a parade of popular contemporary characters, many of whom earn their living in shady or amusing trades. A positively phallic element is as evident here as it is in the Karagöz.

Iranian popular theatre

Popular theatre existed among the Iranians, who were proud of a long-lived cultural tradition and preserved their national language under Arab domination; indeed, even their branch of Islam, Shiʿism, set them apart from the Sunni majority. The Ottomans’ failure to conquer Iran increased competition between the respective intellectual elites. Iran had inherited a considerable theatrical tradition from pre-Islamic times, and it is not surprising that a popular comic theatre flourished there. The central figure of this type of theatre was the katchal pahlavān (“bald actor”), and mimicry was important, both in comedy and in pantomime. The baqqal-bāzī (“grocer play”), in which a grocer repeatedly quarrels with his good-for-nothing servant, is a typical example of the popular comic tradition. The marionette theatre, or lobet-bāzī, while using Iranian puppets, was similar to its Turkish counterpart. At least five puppets appeared, and singing was an integral part of a production that sometimes resembled Italian and French puppet shows. The ortaoyunu, particularly in the region of Azerbaijan, is almost identical with the Turkish form of the same name. The shadow play in Iran, however, has always been less popular and obscene than the Ottoman or Arab Karagöz.