The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (630 page)

(Pers., ‘beggar’). A member of a Muslim religious fraternity (although the word may mean simply a religious mendicant, in Arab.
faq
r
). The fraternities perhaps began in the custom of groups gathering around a particular
S
f
teacher. The particular ritual of a group is as important as
al
t
(prayer). The elimination of outward stimuli is achieved by many different techniques, of which the best-known is the whirling
dance
—hence the ‘whirling dervishes’, more correctly known as
Mawlaw
y(y)a
, transliterated as Mevlevis.

 
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(1567–1622).
Christian
bishop
and spiritual director and, with St Jane Frances de Chantal (1572–1641), the founder of the Salesian style of spirituality. Educated at Paris and Padua his life after ordination was active and much involved in the world and his diocese; whereas Jane de Chantal was more inclined to contemplation and the creation of holy space in her life. Together they founded the community of the Visitation of the Holy Mary. The purpose of Salesian spirituality is to establish devotion to God in the midst of everyday life.
A number of Salesian Orders were subsequently founded, e.g. the Salesians of St John Bosco, the Oblates of St Francis de Sales.

 
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(1596–1650).
Philosopher. Educated at the
Jesuit
college of La Flèche, in 1613 he went to Paris. Having devoted himself to philosophy, he settled in Holland. In 1649, at Queen Christina's invitation, he went to Sweden, where he died. His philosophy—expounded principally in his
Meditations
(1641),
Principles
(1644), and
Discourse on Method
(1637)—is based on a method of radical doubt. But even doubt leaves an awareness of self—his famous
cogito ergo sum
(‘I think, therefore I am’)—which becomes the pivot of his philosophy. From this point Descartes established, by pursuing ‘clear and distinct ideas’, a radical distinction (Cartesian dualism) between mind and matter—‘thinking’ and ‘extended’ reality—the existence of God (principally by a form of the
ontological argument
), and thence the reliability of the world perceived through the senses.

 
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