LUKACH, Harry Charles [later LUKE]. The City of Dancing Dervishes and Other Sketches and Studies from the Near East. London: Macmillan. 1914.
8vo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt and with image of dervish on front cover; pp. xi, 257, [2, advertisements], plates after photographs, old ownership inscription to front fly-leaf, slightest of sporadic spotting internally, otherwise very good.
First edition of this investigation of Sufi practice in Eastern Anatolia (Konya in particular), Northern Iraq and Cyprus, as well as the relation between different religious denominations in the Middle East.
Harry Charles Luke, of Hungarian and Polish ancestry, held several Colonial posts and wrote well-researched works on the Middle East, all of which quite rare. Over 60 pages of the book are devoted to Sabatai Zevi, the controversial 17th-century Ottoman Jewish mystic, who gained a huge following and converted alongside many of his disciples to Sufi Islam.
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