“This turning they kept for the space of one whole hour at least, during which time, sometimes they turned exceedingly swiftly, sometimes very gently. After they had half done, the singer in the upper room began to sing again, at the pronunciation of some of whose words,, the dervishes mumbled out certain strange terms, with a most hideous kind of murmuring that did in a manner terrify and astonish us...The forms of their dancing is as strange as the continence of their swiftness, for sometimes they stretch out their arms as far as they can in length, sometimes they contract them in a lesser compass, sometimes they hold them about their heads, sometimes again they perform certain merry gestures, as if they were drawing a bow and shooting an arrow...The violence of their turning it so great, that I have heard some of them have fallen down dead in the place.”
  The English traveler, Thomas Coryate. 1613